Taking Advantage
by BC
Summary: The Doctor loves surprises. Harry Potter is the only wizard with the Vortex in his blood. Someone gets implicated in intelligent design.
1. The Doctor's Beginning

Taking Advantage

Disclaimer: I'm not one of the genii and lucky people who own bits and pieces of Doctor Who or Torchwood. Also, I don't own Harry Potter and the associated paraphernalia.

Summary: The Doctor loves surprises. Harry Potter is the only wizard with the Vortex in his blood. Someone gets implicated in intelligent design.

Warnings: AU, omnisexuality (including but not limited to slash and implied het), mild sexual situations, innuendo (read Captain Jack Harkness being himself), sort-of not-really cross-dressing, minor character deaths, some unavoidable OOC-ness

A/N: This story has been written post season 5, and as such is _non compliant_ with season 6. Nope. It's _slash_. And crossover. And bloody complicated. I almost exploded my sister's head by trying to explain the meeting chronologically-out-of-sync thing.

Also, it's completed. There are four parts. They will be appearing in roughly weekly intervals. There is a distinct possibility of a spin-off/sequel, but my enthusiasm for it largely depends on the response to this story. I realise it's very abstruse, but I hope you'll like it.

Brynn

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Taking Advantage: The Doctor's Beginning

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_2,225 Earthtime, Thoros Beta_

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The first thing he noticed when consciousness trickled back in was a sense of imbalance, but it was pretty quickly driven out by the more acute sensation of a roaring headache.

Harry opened his eyes and found that he was lying on the floor of a shaking and swaying TARDIS. This kind of thing was hardly unprecedented with the temperamental lady, who time to time simply demanded some attention, although Harry didn't recall ever being transported straight from his home without any warning.

He was becoming too accustomed to the Vortex – he hardly even felt it when he was relocating.

"Hello, beautiful," he said, and sat up.

The TARDIS had been considerate enough to not take him out of bed – Car'Antares' warm climate seduced pretty much everyone into sleeping in the nude – but from the sofa, where he had been watching some pre-3D motion pictures. In consequence, he was dressed in his cut off pants which, when he stood straight, came down just past the crease between his arse and thigh… therefore it was to be expected that the first person he met was Captain Jack Harkness.

The Captain gave Harry an once-over and whistled. "Doctor, you've outdone yourself this time."

The Doctor – tall, big-eared, big-nosed and with a heart-stopping grin stretching his cheeks – peeked out from behind a pillar. His eyes found Harry, the grin disappeared, and he said mostly to himself: "Not good."

"What's not good about him?" Jack protested, shamelessly ogling Harry's naked chest as if there was something especially interesting to see. Suspended as Harry was in his post-war, seventeen-year-old appearance, scrawny from months of near-starvation, bones poking out here and there through pale, scarred skin, with stress-lines etched into his face, he really wasn't much to look at.

"His being here," the Doctor pointed out the obvious. He came out and squatted next to Harry, invading deep into Harry's personal space. "Are you friendly? Unfriendly? Or just confused? Because I am confused right now and you declaring yourself friendly or unfriendly could help me make up my mind – even if it probably wouldn't help with the confusion-"

Harry shut him up by clamping his lips over the Doctor's. He held on for a few seconds and then let go, nodding. "Now I can hear myself think."

"That was _too_ friendly," the Doctor complained. He stood and edged away, predictably bringing out his sonic screwdriver to scan Harry – who was, frankly, used to this.

"Hey, lovely!" Jack sauntered over and offered Harry a hand. "Don't I get a treatment like that?"

Harry climbed to his feet without accepting the help that would have undoubtedly involved wandering hands and blatant flirting. "He," he whispered mock-confidentially, pointing at the Doctor, "put a ring on my finger. He deserves the treatment."

While Jack was collecting his jaw from the floor, Harry looked around. The TARDIS was a little different from what he was used to, but still very much herself. And the Doctor was there, playing with the controls-

Wait a minute. There was a Doctor sonicking Harry. There was a Doctor flying the TARDIS. That added up to two Doctors.

"Okay. This is certainly unprecedented," he said, head swivelling from side to side as if he were watching a tennis match. "I know you don't have a twin, and I know that the only double of you has only one heart, so… How come you're twice, Doctor?"

"Have we met?" the closer Doctor asked, which was, really, just a way of informing Harry that no, they hadn't met yet in the Doctor's timeline, and if they had then Harry had Obliviated this information for world-saving purposes. They did that. A lot, too. As if the _two independent time-travellers_ thing wasn't confusing enough in and of itself.

"Is that a euphemism?" Jack inquired, characteristically unconscious of time and place.

"Not now, Captain," Harry attempted to shush him.

"Have _we_ met?" Jack asked, waggling his eyebrows.

"Not the way you'd like," Harry replied with a sigh, and then turned to the Doctor – the nearest one – to give him a more relevant answer. "Yes and no. That's the trouble _and_ the fun with time-travel. You never know what kind of dirt I might have on you… and vice versa. Right now, it seems, I've got the advantage."

"You do," both Doctors agreed. The second one stabilised the flight and came over to join in the conversation. "Introductions?"

Harry didn't really mind. As far as he knew, he had been introduced to Captain Jack Harkness at a different time and in a different place, but he had no memory of the Doctor meeting him for the first time, and maybe that was now. For the Doctor, obviously. For Harry that had been… well, ages ago. That kind of 'ages' where the correct decade wasn't actually important anymore. Maybe not even the correct century. Certainly, it was pre-space-flight Earth.

"I'm Harry," Harry said. Not that he was polite like that, but it seemed to be prudent to share that information, if for nothing else than to give the Doctor something to call Harry in his head. Harry had tried to legilimise the man once and – the less said about the occurrence the better. "And don't worry, Doctor – you're going to get one up on me soon enough. What's the date, by the way?"

With mind too busy going over the information imparted, the Doctor's mouth replied: "Twenty-two twenty-five, October the thirty-first, where we're going next."

Harry took that to mean that they were, indeed, about to visit early post-contact Earth. Or possibly the Delta-Theta base, but he knew how little the Doctor liked enclosed spaces. Not much room to run in those. It was, with ninety-seven percent certainty, the Earth. Harry tried to remember that time. It was… before the WWIV. After the United Europe blowup, though. There was a Prewett Minister in Britain, he was almost sure, but by that time the proactive group of wizards he had been a member of had become self-sufficient and he had taken off on a journey around the planet and ended up on some UNIT base – wait, no, that was twenty fifty-nine…

"Of course," he replied with a Doctor-like smile empty of meaning. "You've taken Jack travelling again? No. He's from… twenty oh-five? Or twenty oh-six?"

The Captain smiled too much to be from twenty ten or later. From what Harry had observed, Jack Harkness lived in cycles – cycles of depression and mania and tranquility, and once in a while he allowed himself to fall in love and shake things up, but generally his moods were fairly predictable. He had been maniacal about Torchwood, and then depressive when it had fallen apart the first time. Twenty ten.

The Captain himself gave a soft scoff at Harry's estimation of his dates, and with a flirty grin said: "You're a few millennia off-base, lovely." He moved closer, deep into Harry's personal space. "Who are you, by the by?"

"Nobody," Harry replied, and pointed two fingers and Jack's temple. "_Obliviate_. _Stupefy_."

Jack sank to the floor like a bag of flour. Or potatoes. Or whatever it was the people of Earth put into bags around twenty-two twenty-five. Maybe artificial corn?

"He does correlate to twenty oh-five," the Doctor replied, crouching next to Jack's prone body. He examined it with the sonic screwdriver, muttering: "Or not. Rose correlates to twenty oh-five. Jack just doesn't correlate. Time Agent. Retired, of course. The active ones are a pain-"

Harry often suspected that the sonic was somehow ultra- or infra-spatially connected to some monster-computer kind of device, but that device would have to be stored in a dimensional capsule that defied the usual laws of physics and meta-physics, which basically meant a deal with the Devil and… frankly, Harry didn't want to know.

"That's what I meant," Harry said instead of embarking on a verbal journey to places marked 'here be monsters,' and checked on the second Doctor, who was faux-diligently attending to the central panel.

The date and the presence of Jack Harkness – and oh sweet Merlin! This was the _alive_ Jack Harkness from before the undeadification – meant that there should be another companion, if Harry remembered correctly. And wasn't he just displaying the magnitude of his genius today? The Doctor had just mentioned her, after all.

"But shouldn't Rose be around?" Harry inquired. "And can I borrow something to wear? I love the TARDIS, but she's a bit chilly on the inside."

"This is impossible." The crouching Doctor gave him a look so utterly lost that Harry wanted to cry.

The Doctor from the central panel glanced over and jabbed his thumb in the direction of a mouth of a corridor. "First right, then right, another right, and down. It's the holding cell, but, who knows? You might look good in an orange overall."

"Did something happen to Rose?" Harry asked. It shouldn't have. The first really headache-worthy thing since the Reapers that had happened to Rose was becoming the Bad Wolf. That would have meant no Captain Jack Harkness within TARDIS. The TARDIS didn't like the post-Bad-Wolf Captain Harkness.

"What did you do to Jack?" the crouching Doctor inquired, only half-satisfied with the knowledge that Jack's vital statistics were all within normal and he merely seemed to have lost consciousness. The other half was agitated by the defying-normal thing that Harry did routinely.

"He won't remember me when he wakes up," Harry said. "Which should be within two hours. Do you want me to get out of your hair? Because if the TARDIS for whatever reason thought that I should be here, she's liable to just pull me back as soon as I get out."

Both Doctors, steamrolled by the use of TARDIS-logic, caved. The central panel-attending one even offered Harry some milk to drink, if he felt like getting it from the kitchen.

Harry wasn't in the mood for milk, but he wouldn't say no to some quaintberry juice and, knowing the Doctor, there was sure to be some hiding in the back of the fridge, so he just went to pour himself a glass. That, predictably, resulted in both the Doctors scrambling after him to make sure that he wasn't going to be pulling wires from walls or short-circuiting anything 'to see what would happen,' or generally just sabotaging some part of the timespaceship that the Doctor wouldn't be able to repair without a textbook, a tutorial, and someone competent looking over his shoulder.

"Whoa," the Doctor expressed loquaciously when he found Harry in the kitchen – exactly where Harry said he was going.

"You know your way around," the other Doctor remarked.

"You're stating the obvious," Harry pointed out. "In a man of your age and intellect it's rather unattractive."

The Doctors were nearing the end of their parallel thinking processes, and as such absorbed the light flirting with barely a raised brow between them. Harry poured himself the juice, drank it, hand-washed his glass and put it back into the cupboard where he had found it. The TARDIS décor was all early twentieth century Earth, which was just pure nostalgia from the Doctor.

Having come to a conclusion, one of the Doctors told Harry: "Rose is sleeping off her encounter with the Amberian ambassador on Tal Orgoth."

Refraining from drawing a JRR Tolkien simile, Harry quirked an eyebrow. "I thought she didn't meet that creep."

"She didn't," the other Doctor replied, and they both relaxed. "I slipped her some-" he said a word that Harry would hesitate reproducing phonetically, but the object which it described had obviously put Rose Tyler to sleep over the time period it took the Doctor to 'strongly persuade' the slick Amberian bastard that he really didn't want to start a war over whose Emperor had the bigger nose or whatever the current political issue had been. _Love and Peace_ for everyone, Doctor-style.

Not much obvious cause for depression. Still, Harry had agreed to marry that guy, and after the clusterfuck of an apocalyptic disaster that had been Harry's first marriage, nothing short of true love could have been reason enough. Ergo, Harry could read the signs. The man might have looked different (Harry especially bemoaned the hair and the eyes, but there was something to be said for an actual chin and the shoulders he thought he could spy under the jacket…), but that didn't mean the self had changed all that much over a couple of decades at most of his personal time.

"What happened?" Harry asked, trailing a finger along the seam of the sleeve of the nearest Doctor's jacket.

They both shook their heads and gave a unison response of: "Nothing important."

"You did this to yourself on purpose," Harry retorted, vaguely encompassing the duo of identical Time Lords. "Doctor, I get that solitude eats away at you. That sometimes the silence is so loud you want to scream to drown it out. Sometimes you do scream."

"I talk to myself too much-" the further one whispered, while the closer one looked straight into Harry's eyes and added: "I was in a mood for a good argument."

Then they merged together, somehow, and Harry thought his eyes might cross and his brain was doing strange prestidigitations. It was somewhat like feeling that he had had a hallucination that he had never actually had but remembered having, like a _déjà vu_, or _presque vu_, or _jamais vu_. He had never been very good with French, and only average at illusions and mind-games, so his brain wasn't ready to accept the fact that there had never been two Doctors at once when there obviously have been two just a few seconds ago. It was – yes, it _was_ – like visiting a parallel universe, except not like that at all.

It was all a true lie.

He could live with that. Or he thought he could, at least.

Harry sighed and leant back against the hardly ever used (except for that one relatively short period of time when there had been some kinks and fantasies shared and… well… it was bit too soon to think in that direction) kitchen counter. "So you cloned yourself?"

"No. I _halved_ myself," the Doctor said, like it was the most obvious thing in the universe and Harry was being particularly stupid by not cottoning on. Then he – perhaps having noticed Harry's expression that promised things illegal in most galaxies and not invariably pleasurable – reconsidered. Expanding on his previous explanation, he added: "Temporally."

"By which you mean you went back in time to encounter yourself…?" Harry inquired, tilting his head to the side and rubbing his arms. Goose bumps. "No, that would create a paradox. You'd risk implosion."

"Time Lord," the Doctor said, in a tone that suggested that he was pointing out the obvious.

"Bullshit," Harry replied in exactly the same tone.

"Fine, fine," the _Time Lord_ grumbled, like it was hurting him to have to own up. "I created a minor trouser-effect in a contained space."

That _would_ allow him to live two possible personal futures for a short length of time.

Harry's mind backtracked to the kitchen counter and then, faced with the prospect of two identical Doctors whose relative position in the space-time wasn't threatening the coherence of the continuum, set out down the predictable path. He shook himself. "That's got me thinking distinctly Jack-Harkness-like thoughts. Don't do that, Doctor. Honestly, don't. Empathising with the Captain weirds me out."

The Doctor shrugged. Folded his arms in front of his chest. Leant against the table opposite Harry.

There was tension of massive proportions. Thick. Creamy – wait a sec, could tension be creamy? Never mind. There was a meeting of eyes. Either history repeated itself or the Doctor had inquisitively slipped into Harry's mind while Harry had been thinking about kitchen counters and double the usual dose of the Doctor, because fuck if that red string between them wasn't becoming visible any moment now…

"I apologise," Harry said faux-contritely. "I shouldn't have kissed you. Not without your consent."

The Doctor swallowed. "I'll survive a kiss. I kiss strangers all the time – just ask Rose. Time-travel is like a trip to Paris-"

Harry let his eyes widen, adopting an air of exaggerated innocence. "That doesn't mean you welcome it."

The Doctor shrugged, catching onto the game. Suddenly, he appeared to be perfectly nonchalant. "It _was_ quite spontaneous. I thought you were just glad to see me."

"I was," Harry admitted. "I am." Then, he decided enough of the tension was dispelled that he could afford introducing some relevant truths. "I'm from a time when I take this kind of affection from you for granted."

"Affection?" the Doctor repeated, as if tasting the word. It was quite ambiguous – thank the British for English, because Harry never would have gotten away with that kind of lack of specificity in Antaresian or, Merlin forbid, _Gallifreyan_.

It wasn't like Harry couldn't describe a lot of what he felt, both at the moment _and_ long-term. He knew (had the scars to show for it) that the Doctor didn't like talking about love. He even denied other affectations too closely related to romantic love – like lust and self-adjustment and will to compromise and fear of solitude. The Doctor was all about brokenheartedness and skittish like a lamb when it came to the topic. Hence 'affection.'

On the other hand, Harry wasn't aiming to make his statement open to interpretation. He didn't think it could have been, what with the 'put a ring on my finger' he had tossed out there earlier.

"Doctor…" he said softly, "I checked out your tonsils with my tongue. And I know perfectly well that you don't have any money."

The man shook his head and bit the inside of his cheek. "This story you are not telling me… it's not very Shakespearean, is it?"

Harry was startled into a chuckle. "No, not very. Why?"

"Good." The Doctor nodded resolutely. "Nothing against Shakespeare, I'm sure he's a perfectly delightful fellow, but he should cheer up."

"His son died," Harry suggested as a possible explanation to Shakespeare's recurrent woefulness, even if it wasn't really relevant to solving the present situation. Harry still wasn't any closer to discovering why TARDIS demanded him onboard than he had been upon finding himself here.

"He's hardly the only one," the Doctor replied.

Harry flinched. In his mind, he very briefly saw the repeatedly stabbed body of one of his children – that was such a fucking long time ago for him – before he utilised what Occlumency he was capable of to put it back under the lid with all the other plentiful tragedies that tried to haunt him.

"That was insensitive, wasn't it?" the Doctor remarked with a smirk that was fairly incongruent to the look in his eyes and his posture. "I'm an insensitive person these days."

"Luckily," Harry replied with a bit of testiness that was just his reflexive reaction to cruel taunts, whether those were meant or not, "I know a more _compassionate_ incarnation of yours. Not that you are ever demonstratively compassionate, just sort of kick-the-baddies'-asses compassionate. And now you've got me talking like you. Not _you_ you, but the other you." To think that made sense in his head.

To think that the Doctor could actually follow that.

The Doctor merely let his arms down and shrugged. "Yet again you have me at a temporal disadvantage."

"Only a subjective one." Indeed, the disadvantage only pertained to their mutual personal experience. In anything else, the Doctor was still centuries ahead. Nevertheless, Harry was determined to milk what little advantage he _did_ have. "And you love speaking with someone who understands even the gist of what you're saying, don't you?"

"Are you a Time Lord, Harry?" the Doctor asked. He even looked like it was a serious question.

"Not hardly." Harry finally chanced abandoning the counter and coming within a step of the Doctor. Since there was no immediate fight-or-flight reaction, he dared catch the Doctor's hand and press its palm flatly to his – bare, as he realised a bit too late (not that he actually minded) – chest. "One heart. Born and raised on Earth, parents both fully human far as I know. I'm just… longaeval."

"I see the attraction of that," the Time Lord mused. "Most of the friends I pick up are so sadly perishable. And they insist on flinging themselves into endangerment whenever possible."

Harry had a theory about that. "It's a case of you staring too long into the Abyss and the Abyss staring back at you… except it's not the Abyss but something more like… life. They get too much life thrown their way and it forces them to start living. What else would it be? They get into fights and it awakens their fighting instincts – otherwise they would die."

At this point someone probably should have reminded the Doctor that his hand was still on Harry's solar plexus, and that Harry's heart was beating somewhat faster than should be expected of it in such otherwise tranquil surroundings. Also, that Harry could smell the Doctor from this distance, and he was used to that being an unspoken invitation, so his Pavlovian reaction was arousal. It could be understood that Harry didn't point out the Doctor's proximity for fear that the Doctor would remove himself. Captain Jack Harkness was still Stunned somewhere on the floor. Rose Tyler was still sleeping off her non-encounter with the ambassador. The only other entity present was the TARDIS, and she appeared to be, if anything, amused.

Harry held the Doctor's wrist in one hand, and put the other on a leather-clad shoulder. It felt as good as it had looked.

"There are," the Doctor spoke, aware of what was happening and contemplating whether or not he should let it go on, "two types of experience. Will to fight and cynicism."

"You pick up the lucky ones – the _important_ ones. The ones you know would have to live for the continuity of the continuity. Or do they make themselves that important by becoming your companions?" Harry, who prided himself on understanding the Doctor better than anyone else did, didn't push for any more 'affection.' Instead, he freed the wrist he had previously imprisoned and scampered through the door he suspected would bring him closer to the closet. The TARDIS truly _was_ chilly. From the dim, winding corridor he called: "Which came first, Doctor, the phoenix or the egg?"

x

Spontaneous crash-landings, mutiny of his sentient vessel, universal hiccups, invasions, genocides, knots in timelines and seemingly random dislocations of things and beings were the fabric of a rogue Time Lord's ordinary day.

It was far from the first time a stranger appeared on the TARDIS. There had been attackers and refugees both in the past, but Doctor couldn't seem to recall any instance when the accidental stowaway had claimed an established relationship between them and as good as proved it by being not only able to follow his train of thought, but also to argue with him most satisfyingly and to generally just _fit_.

It irked the Doctor. A lot. It irked him more than it excited him to have a chance to poke and prod at something new and novel and unprecedented that wasn't threatening to kill him or his companions.

"That's a non-specific question," he protested. What better way to find out about his mysterious alleged acquaintance (human, male, physical age at around eighteen, time-sensitive, mildly psychic, shoe-size seven and half, _necessary_ prescription glasses in Earthian style but made of crystal only found in the Zorden system, barefoot and dressed in the highest fashion of the eleventh century's Ninth Empire, with twenty-eight teeth and with scars untouched by modern medical technology) than feed their argument? "There had been eggs all over the universe before an Earthian culture conceived of an immortal bird," he said, mentally listing all the better ways. Like, scan him again. Or take him to New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York and hand him over to a nurse. Or – and he was a little angry with himself for being so tempted – just use plain old mind-invasion.

Harry chuckled. "And yet you managed to answer it without even trying to. People imagined a bird first. The egg was an inducted necessity for the purpose of the legend."

He was lying. The Doctor was sure that Harry was lying, but he couldn't see how that was possible when all he said was a known fact. Also, Harry managed to spread the headache he had had since he had woken up to the Doctor, too, and that just made him cranky, aside from being irked.

Why did the TARDIS like the stranger?

"Why a phoenix?" the Doctor asked. He was familiar with the saying, but he had not yet heard this alternative. "Why not a chicken? Wasn't it supposed to be 'what came first? The chicken or the egg?'"

"Why not a sparrow?" Harry returned, pausing for a moment, as the TARDIS unlocked the closet door for him.

If that was supposed to mean something to the Doctor, it missed its mark. The translator didn't translate the word 'sparrow' from any of the multiple languages that used it, and the Doctor couldn't recall ever having noticed a sparrow past the usual, very human 'look, there's a little bird!' way and the somewhat Time Lord-specific 'that _passer domesticus_ is flying at forty-one point two seven three four miles per hour at the angle of fifty-four point-'

"The phoenix is immortal," Harry mused, while the Doctor deliberated over the trajectories of an Earth-specific bird's flight. "Or, rather, it reincarnates in possession of its memories. That's more like it." He smiled over his shoulder, cementing the idea as a metaphor for the Doctor's life, and then dove waist-deep in between the hanging dresses.

Humans were just so interesting, in how they used metaphors and hyperboles and generally spoke as nonspecifically and inaccurately as possible. How did they manage, when their tiny, low-capacity brains had to do a huge amount of deduction just to translate casual speech, without even taking into account wordplays, lying, implications, evasions and politics? The Doctor was tempted to ask 'why a sparrow?' but then it seemed to him like he would be repeating himself, and anyway, he had received enough hints to understand that 'sparrow' was, for some as of yet indiscernible reason, a metaphor for his guest. Besides, voicing that would have made him feel stupid. He didn't generally mind _looking_ stupid, but he hated it when he _felt_ that way.

Harry resurfaced, pouting a little as he obviously had not found what he was looking for among the dresses. "Someone as powerful as you can afford to be kind and magnanimous," he said, turning around to search through the unsorted mess of clothing Rose had not yet tidied up. "But humans are really fragile, Doctor. Tiny, weak, short-lived, easily damaged. To just survive, they have to make up for power and skill by upping the aggressiveness."

The Doctor couldn't disagree, but he also didn't see the point of Harry's statement. He cared for humans – cared more for them then he should have, perhaps, but who was going to tell him what he should and shouldn't do? Besides, even if some misguided personage of authority tried, it wasn't likely that he would listen, not to speak about complying. Also, he had heard similar spiels often enough from the humans who travelled with him. Jack, for example, liked to believe his own fragility (not in those words, as he was too vainglorious to admit to such an unmanly quality) was a reason why he should be using firearms. As opposed to Rose, who gladly made do with whatever was at hand.

As opposed to Harry, who did not seem the least bit disconcerted by appearing on board of the TARDIS practically naked. However, seeing as he had dispatched Jack with the barest effort, he apparently also belonged to the category of beings powerful enough that they could afford magnanimity.

"Somehow," the Doctor said, "I am under the impression that it should be Jack saying this."

Harry discovered a pair of jeans that he seemed to like, and moved to pull off his shorts. The Doctor wasn't sure if he should turn around, but eventually he decided that it didn't really matter. Or, it shouldn't have. There was a concept squirming inside his mind, on the edge of consciousness, that tried to remind him that he had thought harmless flirting would remain harmless, but it hadn't, and he had ended up at the mercy of Harry's understanding.

That had not been nice. On the other hand, he had lucked out. Harry seemed to _be_ nice. Or, as nice as someone powerful enough and old enough to know that displaying magnanimity to others couldn't be anything but patronising, could be.

The Doctor's hearts skipped their respective beats. He had since become used to taking things as they came and making the best of them while having as much fun as he could and enjoying the exhilaration of the humans in his wake, but this was, maybe, someone who could see through him. He tried to stifle the new-born hope, but he was too much of an eternal optimist to murder a baby. Someone who understood? There hadn't been anyone since…

Harry fastened the buttons and glanced around, saying: "Except that he wouldn't."

The little part of Doctor's mind focused on the conversation put the response into correlation with the previous statement.

"He's worse than you about explanations and excuses," Harry added.

Their eyes briefly met, before Harry once again returned to dressing himself.

"Explanations make life boring, and excuses are bad for you. Awful on digestion," the Doctor offered, with his 'guess if I'm speaking gibberish to confound you or if this is actually something true but beyond the scope of your ken?' expression.

"I know," Harry replied infuriatingly easily. He gave himself a critical look in the mirror, and Shrunk the jeans to fit _snuggly_. The Doctor had met occurrences he had written off as magic before. He was certain he would meet some again. None of them, however, had been performed with such ease, on such a minor scale, with such a mundane result. It seemed like a criminal waste of power.

Then again, Harry appeared to have done that magic without thinking, perfunctorily, like it was the minutest of everyday actions. That suggested that he had had lots and lots of practice. Also, he obviously had lots and lots of power. The Doctor hesitated to consider the fallout-spectrum someone like Harry must have (admittedly, he had little to talk about there, seeing as he _had_ deserved the moniker 'Oncoming Storm' from the most feared race in the known and documented universe).

"Magic," he said pensively.

Harry glanced at him, expression of curiosity changing into understanding and determination in a flash. Then he picked a green shirt from a hanger and pulled it on. "You think?"

"Definitely not," the Doctor replied, shaking his head. It just didn't work.

"Okay."

Harry pulled off the shirt and carelessly threw it onto the pile, while the Doctor contemplated the ramifications of magic and tried to imagine how in time-space he became entangled with a real-life wizard. And what it meant. And didn't mean. He pinched himself, too, because it would have made his life incomparably simpler (and, as this was _himself_ thinking it, that meant something) if it had been just a very wacky dream brought on by his short but tumultuous acquaintance with the ambassador of Amberia.

He hissed. The pinch kind of hurt, and he remained stubbornly awake, staring at the back – now that he thought it, he raised his eyes to actually stare at the _back_ – of a man who actually used magic. Actual _magic_. It was like _sek on t hra matin_. Like love. It was more improbable than a Time Lord surviving his thirteenth death.

Whoops.

'Such is the nature of miracles,' the TARDIS reminded him. 'Someone has to painstakingly orchestrate them.'

"You're lucky he can never stay mad at you, my Lady," Harry said with a breathy chuckle, and turned to the Doctor, wearing Rose's Union Jack t-shirt. It was looser on him than it had been on Rose. "I think I like this one. Very patriotic."

"_You_ are British?" the Doctor asked doubtfully. Yes, Harry did speak English, and had said that he was originally from Earth, but he had no discernible accent. Plus, of all the ages, all the planets with human and part-human and post-human inhabitants, even of all the nations and nationalities of Earth… why _British_? What was it about Britain that made it into such a metagravitational centre?

"Born and raised," Harry replied. "I have Antaresian citizenship. Anyway, the TARDIS is partial to the British, although so far no one has figured out why."

The TARDIS reminded the Doctor that they both lived by the principle 'it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission' and sometimes also 'don't apologise – deny.'

Harry's smile grew lopsided. "That's why we never spend too much time together," he said. "I tried it once – just wanted to make it easier on myself. I thought it must be – I knew other people who lived by these principles and they were perpetually happier."

'And you are twice cursed with a long life to accumulate mistakes and a conscience to suffer for them,' the Doctor didn't say.

"How do you do it?" Harry asked. "_How_, Doctor?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I run faster than my demons can follow."

x

Harry stood by the central column and silently catalogued the changes that would happen to the space around him in the years to come, while the Doctor went to babysit Jack and Rose, who had both woken and demanded explanations and apologies for their perceived hurts. Rose especially sounded angry – her voice carried through the TARDIS as she complained about not being a little child and being able to behave herself around foreign dignitaries, and didn't relent until she was informed that the Amberian had attempted to purchase a blonde woman from one of the hosts for the price of a herd of domesticated turtle-like creatures.

Harry was submerged in a casual exchange of impressions with the TARDIS when the Doctor came back, hands in the pockets of his jacket and muttering.

"Isn't this an incarnation-specific thing?" Harry asked the TARDIS. He could recall having seen the Doctor with both his hands in his pockets, but that had been a different personality.

'It's a pose,' the ship replied.

"I don't see it," Harry stated, and poked the Doctor's side.

He had plenty of time to remove himself into a safe distance before the Doctor fished his hand out of the pocket and swatted at him.

"I still don't believe you," the Doctor warned Harry. "But you make it difficult. Must you be difficult? Think of how much easier it would be for both of us if we returned to our solitary but very exciting, trouble-rife lives-"

"The TARDIS brought me here," Harry said unrepentantly, doing his best to not laugh at the Doctor's pout. "What did you do with the children?"

"They put on a film and are sharing a bowl of extremely unhealthy substance incomprehensibly labelled as food," the Doctor grumbled. "There was picture animation and _songs_."

Harry could hear the distant sounds of what was probably some Disney. He had mixed feelings about those films and didn't like to think about them at all. He used to watch them with his children when they were little – Al liked Hercules while Lily was partial to Aladdin – because he had never seen them before. The Dursleys had probably been too scared of the 'magic' in them.

He blinked and hid those memories away before he made a complete idiot of himself by starting to cry.

"What do you do – for living?" the Doctor asked out of nowhere.

Harry narrowed his eyes.

"Will you be missed if you don't return soon enough?"

"I have no doubt," Harry said sweetly, "that the beautiful Lady can return me right back to where and when she took me from."

"Then you have time for tea and biscuits-"

"And conversation," Harry filled in, perfectly aware that the point of this extempore was to give the Doctor a chance to figure out as much about him as he needed to know for some of his soon-to-take-place encounter. It was a bit like making provisions for a trip, except that in this case they were gathering not material, but information.

They sat down in the library, the Doctor on a low settee, Harry on a pillow, back resting against a bookshelf with books in strange languages. Harry could have read them with the help of the TARDIS, but he wasn't the least bit interested. He had never been and never would be a bookworm. Still, he found libraries soothing since his early childhood, when they were the one safe haven where he could hide from Dudley's bullying.

Funny, how an encounter with the Doctor made him think about his childhood and youth so much.

"Can magic be explained?" the Doctor asked, lacing his fingers behind his head and leaning back. His eyes, under lowered lids, were observing Harry's every movement – there was a little too much intensity in the gaze for it to be purely professional interest.

Harry felt giddy at the thought.

"It can be _described_," he offered. "To a point. I can try, if you want, or alternatively I can let you observe and come to your own conclusions, but I recommend the first option despite its inherent disadvantages, because I just don't plan to be around long enough for the second to be effective."

"Okay," the Doctor said uncharacteristically laconically, and gestured with his hand for Harry to continue.

"Ply me with more quaintberry juice?" Harry teased. Since they had just traipsed across the ship to the possibly most distant room, it was pure provocation on his part. He cast a few spells, and the carton with the juice and a glass appeared on a tray on the floor next to him. It had been a very, very long time since he had had a house elf, so he was quite accomplished at these little domestic enchantments.

The Doctor was watching him closely, not quite enraptured, but definitely enjoying the short vacation from boring old normalcy. "You _appear_ to be easily satisfied."

"I'm not a snob," Harry professed, "but I only settled for you, so that shows my particular and distinguished taste."

Then he felt the TARDIS urging him, so he started his explanation about magic.

x

The Doctor was not a desirable audience. He was too good at reading people, so he saw all inconsistencies. He was too clever to misguide, and even if he had known nothing about magic past that it existed before Harry started speaking, he was entirely too good at spotting its advantages and disadvantages and inherent problems part-way through Harry's speech.

When Harry mentioned thestrals and tried to explain why he had not seen them at the end of his fourth year, only in the beginning of his fifth, and touched on his depression during the summer, they had a short but vicious mental clash.

Harry knew that the Doctor ran through his life with his 'sweet' face turned to the world and his gloves on, and he only ever took those off when he was facing a threat that he feared – an enemy he wasn't sure he could defeat. It was flattering. Also painful.

He shielded from the Doctor's intrusion with Occlumency, but nature, age and experience gave the Doctor the upper hand and he, after a short struggle, got in. the first impression he encountered, and obviously hadn't expected, was love, love for him as the one who travelled along the other curve of the double helix.

Similar to how Voldemort had reacted once upon a time, the Doctor recoiled.

He recoiled before he could have discovered the uglier, less probable, minutiae of his relationship with Harry.

"You claim Antaresian citizenship," the Doctor spoke quietly, giving Harry an apologetic grimace – as if apology could make up for an attempt on mental violation.

Harry was now fully aware just how scared the Doctor was of him. Only terror and desperation could have made the last Time Lord attempt something that he considered depraved.

"Antaresian xenophobia only abates in about three hundred thousand years from now. They stop killing aliens earlier than that, but they're no better than early post-contact Earth about creating and maintaining interplanetary relations-"

"I don't die and I don't age," Harry explained. He let the Doctor believe that it was only because of the TARDIS that he had bridged the distance of time. "My power keeps growing. Every decade there is a marked increase in the range and variety of things I find myself capable of accomplishing with nothing but knowledge and will." Like time-travel and galaxies-spanning Apparition.

"That's not good," the Doctor stated, shaking his head. He slid off the settee, snatched Harry's glass, took a deep draught of the juice and started pacing from one end of the bookshelf to the other.

"I rather thought that would be your stance," Harry replied. "The TARDIS doesn't mind me, so whatever I am is apparently a naturally occurring phenomenon. Still, I don't see the end and it scares me."

"You don't seem to mind the journey overmuch, though," the Doctor pointed out, taking another sip.

Harry nodded. "You will have used to say that in your case it was the journey that mattered, in mine it was the end."

"You don't seem to be in a hurry to get there," the Doctor half-asked.

"I just told you," Harry said, folding his legs. The jeans were a bit tight, but that was his fault for Shrinking them so much. "It scares me. Besides, whatever you want to believe, I enjoy spending time around you, and I believe you will come to enjoy the time you spend around me."

"You sound very _ben-__gesserity_ to me. All that philosophical twaddle to hide the inevitability from yourself may lend you credence in front of an idealistic species like humans, but there's no science in it. No quantifiable magnitude and direction. All natural forces have their scientifically determinable limits-"

"A mutual acquaintance suggested that I'm a missile aimed at the focus of the causality spiral. If that helps," Harry said, with detectable sarcasm.

"It raises the hair on my forearms," the Doctor said, returning both the glibness and the sarcasm.

"Oh," Harry with difficulties suppressed a snort, "I know it makes both your hearts go pitter-patter."

"You sound like a married couple," Jack Harkness' voice broke their nauseatingly domestic moment.

The Doctor and Harry both spun to face the arch. Rose and the Captain were standing under it, both still cheerful from the happy ending for some animated fictional characters they had watched, and both suspicious of Harry's presence and obvious familiarity with the Doctor and his _modus vivendi_.

"_No_, we _don't_," the Doctor emphatically protested. "Whatever we are, we are not yet, only will be, and it wouldn't make any sense if we appeared to be something we are not until we are. That. Or are that more than one-sidedly. Because I'm not. And if I am when he's from than I only will be and cannot be held accountable-"

"_Married_?" Rose exclaimed. She scowled and gave the Doctor a look that would have made lesser men quake in their trainers. "You never told me you were married."

"Was once. Am not. I just said I'm not," the Doctor was quick to correct the assumption. Under the weight of the doubtful gaze Harkness transferred from Harry to him, he amended: "Not yet. Apparently. Time-travel. Causality. Time and relative dimensions in space." He grinned with the intensity of a white dwarf.

Rose's jaw sank a little as she tried to think through the barrage of disjointed thoughts. Her confusion changed to determination as she decided that he was either having her on, or fuzzing the issue on purpose.

"Don't get angry, Rose," Harry said before he thought it through. He could have at least introduced himself, or said 'hi' before he had tried to tell her how she should feel.

"Married," Rose repeated, staring at the Doctor, with her mouth still hanging a little open. "To a _boy_."

Harry tried to do some quick math in his head. Not one of his stronger sides, but he estimated that around twenty oh-five, most civilised muggles were accepting of homosexuality, and even of civil unions. Therefore he addressed the other complaint: "I'm older than I look."

"Well…" Rose startled, as if she finally realised that Harry was sentient, too, and could speak for himself quite competently, "obviously you are." She paused for a moment, unaware of the nonverbal communication that happened between the Doctor and the Captain, in which the Doctor reassured Harkness that yes, Harry was alright, and there was no need to jump at him with the raygun Jack was hiding behind Rose's back. Then she tilted her head and asked: "How much older?"

"A few hundred years," Harry replied with a noncommittal smile. "And don't let the marriage thing get to you. It's just an Earthian ritual – no validity in the universal law. Just a gesture."

"I will have a very strange concept of recreation," the Doctor remarked self-depreciatingly.

Harry was aware enough of the changes his personality would undergo to let it bother him. "It's a good thing I met a different incarnation of yours first. You're kind of unfriendly." He met the Doctor's eyes. "Like someone's hurt you and you're too afraid it's going to happen again."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," the Doctor said, even managed to make it sound believable, but he broke the eye-contact.

"Alright," Harry agreed easily. He didn't want to be a bastard to his future lover, and he especially didn't want to do anything intrusive in front of an audience. "I don't believe you, but you don't believe me that it doesn't matter – and that's alright. You don't really know me yet. It's going to get better. I promise. I know I shouldn't, because you especially don't believe anything that's promised to you, but I do."

"You just talked at me for a minute and I don't think you've actually said anything," the Doctor said, still looking elsewhere – at the empty glass in his hand, at the carton next to Harry's knee, at the table, at the arm the Captain hadn't quite put around Rose.

Harry scowled. Now it made sense. The cantankerous git had asked for it. He clicked his fingers, pointed at the Doctor, and suddenly there was a macaque sitting on the Doctor's shoulder. It immediately reached for the nearest big ear.

"There," Harry said. "You've got an ape to talk down to, so that we humans can catch a break." He stood, and pushed past Harkness out of the library.

x

"How did you-" Rose gaped, open-mouthed. "Doctor, how did he _do_ that?"

"I don't know," the Doctor said. That sounded better to him than 'magic.' Rose wasn't ready for magic. He wasn't sure if he was ready for magic, but he had seen enough that magic slotted easily between the existence of TARDIS and the trouser-effect in his mind, if only when he overlooked it being used to make clothes fit better.

Jack was staring at Harry's behind, but Rose gaped at the monkey on the Doctor's shoulder – and was that supposed to be some kind of metaphorical statement again? The Doctor didn't do metaphors.

He didn't do monkeys, either. The little monster attempted to appropriate his ear, and his loud: "Ouch! Don't do that!" didn't seem to discourage it in the least.

Rose turned and set out after Harry. "Wait!"

"What is he?" Jack asked, looking, for a change, at Rose's behind. "Or should it be 'who is he?'"

The Doctor deliberated. He could see himself, hear his thoughts, ideas, opinions, his figures of speech in Harry's stories and explanations. He quite clearly detected traces of a common past between them, of experiences they had shared, and-

Well, it was bordering on impossible to deny the blizzard of emotion he had uncovered behind Harry's mental shields. He didn't even know the man's full name.

"Those are two different questions," he said to Jack, and moved to follow after Rose.

Jack fell into step next to him and accepted with dignity when the Doctor dodged the hand he tried to put around his shoulders. "He mind-wiped me, didn't he," Jack asked with a tight smile. "I know the feeling. Plus, there was this nagging impression of you saying 'I do' I had in my mind. Usually, I don't jump to conclusions about people's personal status-"

"Usually, you assume everyone is available," the Doctor pointed out.

Jack huffed. "Only the good-looking ones."

The macaque chose that moment to try and detach the Doctor's ear again, and the two engaged in a struggle, which Jack offered to resolve with his handy raygun and thus prompted the Doctor to protect the poor, oppressed member of the less intelligent species from the aggressive human. The ape shrieked and hurtled out of sight, and the Doctor was left glaring after it in betrayal.

"Right," he muttered. "Just climb down from the tree and invent the wheel, and you'll make a passable human. _Primates_."

"You care for us, really," Jack said with a winning smile and rested his palm on the Doctor's shoulder. "You care for us enough to watch Disney with us – I bet Rose that you would. They never teach you about Earthian twentieth century cinematography in history classes. You will enjoy Lion King, Doctor. It's your kind of story. _The Circle of Life_."

It took the Doctor a moment to realise he was being flirted with, and then he ignored it with ease that was growing every day he spent in the vicinity of Jack Harkness. He had had companions in the past that were almost as hands-on – not quite so unwilling to take no for an answer, but also not quite as desperately infatuated. Nevertheless, he was fairly sure that one of these days he would forget to wait for Jack to return to the TARDIS before he would take off. The ventilation worked fulltime just to disperse the cloud of pheromones, and it took energy to power the fans.

Would that humans could control their instincts.

Oh, no. He had to amend that. Would that humans could control their mating instincts. The other instincts were fine with him. The species would be entirely boring without those impulses.

"You go and find the ape before it pillages the fridge," he ordered Jack, whose flirtatious smile became lopsided with self-deprecation. "I'll make sure that Harry won't start telling Rose any embarrassing stories about me."

However unwillingly, Jack went. The Doctor waited for him to move out of earshot before he allowed himself a gusty exhale and a few seconds to keep his eyes closed and feel how the planet beneath – above, from another point of view – his feet was hurtling through space, dragged forward in time by the insuperable forces of momentum and inevitability, and how tiny and yet essential he was in that unimaginably complex wheelwork of universal causality. That was the paradox of every individual, and the reason why Harry was so far out of the realm of reasonability that his life's intersection with the Doctor's had to be orchestrated by outside powers.

Science knew that two paradoxes in close proximity were explosive.

Myth claimed there was an exception to the Law.

He should have laughed at himself – he, the last Time Lord, would be the answer to an all-but-forgotten prophecy? Unlikely.

"…meet seem so average," Rose's voice reached his ears.

The Doctor walked toward it, searching his memory for Harry's face. If their lives truly were so entwined, they would have already met.

"…it's the whole universe. And then I don't want to go home, and I feel awful about it. It's my _home_. And mostly I just can't stop comparing it to the other places I've seen. It's so _boring_. Sometimes I just feel a little cheated."

"It's too bloody difficult to be extraordinary when your circumstances are ordinary," Harry replied to Rose. "You never get to show off that special spark in you. You're doomed in your own mediocrity."

"Only lazy people and cowards choose mediocrity over the chance to shine," Jack replied, approaching the chatting pair from the opposite direction. The ape was bound and gagged; obviously Jack had taken the statement about all primates being generally the same too literally, and considered the animal a prisoner. Well, Jack had never really been a poster-boy for humanity, whatever else he might have been a poster-boy for. At least the macaque was being quiet.

Harry did not comment on the treatment his 'gift' had received, but he did cross his arms and affect a fair impression of righteous indignation. "And introverts," he sternly argued, "agoraphobics, impaired people, people with obligations and those who just feel more comfortable fading into background. They might have extraordinariness thrust upon them, but they would not choose it." He seemed to be speaking from personal experience, too.

No matter how hard the Doctor was looking, he couldn't see any mark of the supposed mediocrity left in the man – spectacles, bare feet, blue denims and Union Flag t-shirt notwithstanding.

He stepped within sight of the three humans and went straight past them, to the central column of the TARDIS. One of the blue lights winked at him. She had refuelled and was ready for take-off, he supposed – or maybe she wanted to rib him about his constant effort to dodge all Jack's attempts at seduction. Or – no, surely not. He was fairly certain that she was just teasing.

No way he was taking her seriously.

Just… no. No.

"It's all too easy for old, experienced, devious men to lure innocent young boys and girls into their webs," Harry added glumly. Off-handedly, he _spelled_ the bindings off of the ape, which promptly attacked Jack's hair in a funny but inefficient attempt on revenge.

The Doctor raised his head, facing the central column of the TARDIS. He had had too much deep thinking for one day, but the accusation wouldn't have stung if there had not been a speck of truth to it. "I only offer them the opportunity to travel with me," he said. "I have never forced anyone-"

"Not explicitly, no," Harry agreed. The Doctor could feel the poisonously green gaze between his shoulder blades. "But you do sometimes pull people into your world just by being around them. I'm not judging you, or saying it's not necessary. It's just a fact."

The Doctor pretended to busy himself with the controls, while Jack concentrated on pretending that he wasn't listening and re-binding the macaque, and Rose watched the verbal spar between the two men too old for their own good.

"I am not omniscient, and sometimes their involvement is inevitable," he oversimplified.

"How inelegant!" Harry scoffed. "First you demand that they have free will and then take all its worth away by claiming personal responsibility? Or, worse, _fate_?" He leant against the railing and surreptitiously loosened the ape's bindings _again_.

That action left the Doctor with a nagging suspicion that Harry didn't like Captain Jack Harkness in the least and that he limited his antagonism to such a petty scale only because he was being, as he had suggested, magnanimous. The TARDIS as good as pulsed with amusement.

"What is it, even – fate?" Harry demanded. "The fixed events in history? Is that it?"

The Doctor chuckled. There was little mirth in the sound, but the hope he had tried to smother was growing strong and steadfast and more probable. He pushed a few buttons, more out of the hyperactivity that could not be choke-held than out of any real purpose. "I think I can see why I'll like you," he admitted.

The words didn't taste like defeat. Also, he could hear Harry's smile when the man said: "Yeah, you love to argue with me."

"Jack's right," Rose stated, trying really hard not to sound despondent.

"I am?" Jack asked, surprised. "I mean, of course I am. My vocation used to be lying to strangers. I can-"

"Aren't you full of yourself," Rose remarked, swatting Jack's shoulder.

Jack victoriously affixed a temporary collar and leash to the neck of his prisoner. "I will be. Hopefully. As soon as the Doctor teaches me how to double-"

Harry stepped up to the Doctor's side, keeping a polite foot-wide space between them, even though it was obvious that he didn't like the distance. The Doctor for the life of him couldn't imagine how he could have learnt to get on with someone so _nice_.

"I always thought he had lost his social filter later on, maybe along with his sanity," Harry grumbled.

The Doctor flinched and hoped that the amount of knowledge contained in that seemingly innocuous statement wouldn't lead to civilisation-abolishing consequences. He had not wanted to know. At least not before it was necessary.

"Go," he implored his stowaway. "Go – go back to the future or whenever you belong. I don't want you here."

Harry gave him a dewy-eyed look. "You'd rather halve yourself? Or shout at empty walls? That's the fastest road to losing objectivity." His hands stroked down the console in an approximation of a caress.

"You don't belong here," the Doctor maintained, half-watching the easy familiarity that Harry had with the TARDIS, half-listening to the argument between Rose and Jack.

"Is that your obstinacy or your Time Lord mojo telling you this?" Harry inquired. "And mind your nose; you never know when it could start growing."

Seeing as how Harry was magically inclined, the Doctor believed that there was a viable chance he might gain a grotesque nose in addition to his already attention-grabbing ears, so he decided to not lie for the moment.

Then he felt a warm hand slipping into his. He wanted to move away, to rip apart the first mutually consensual physical contact between him and Harry, but he could not. He knew the feeling. This was a fixed point in history – a metagravitational centre – the first intersection of the helixes on his side.

Harry squeezed his fingers and let go.

"It's incredible," Rose mused. "In the whole _huge_ time and space – that you two even meet each other…"

"That's not discovered yet," Harry explained, turning around to smile at Rose. "Eventual gravitation."

"That won't be discovered for three hundred thousand years!" the Doctor protested. Harry really should have been more careful about how much future knowledge he was bringing into the past. It were careless travelers like him who caused most of the minor catastrophes.

"Seems pretty straightforward to me." Harry shrugged, and expanded for Rose: "It's a sinque of arguments: relevant events, relevant coordinates, relevant entities, relevant tensions and relevant fallout-spectrum. They all attract one another around the fixed points in history – those are basically metagravitational centres. That's why you can't change them. Whatever you do, it's like flinging peas at a black hole."

"You two do fit together," Rose said, smiling sadly. She hopped off the railing and mimed going to the next room.

"Oh, like that was impressive," the Doctor grumbled. "They teach that in the pre-school care where he's from."

"I can't wait for you to pull your head out of your arse." Harry laughed, shaking his head. "You'll have a lot of fun doing things this you would think were silly. Like competing in a scrabble tournament in Hoixian, and tickling the laughing rocks at the F'thorrin gulf-"

"And getting married," the Doctor chimed in dryly.

"That, too," Harry confirmed. "You dwell on it a bit too much, considering how little it actually matters."

Jack, as surreptitiously as possible with a macaque on a leash, followed after Rose.

"I'm not any better at fulfilling promises than I am at believing them," the Doctor said.

Harry laughed again. "I knew you were a liar the moment you introduced yourself to me, _Doctor_. And I'd been hurt, and in a very bad place, and you just smashed through the walls I was building around myself and made me open my eyes and _look_ and find something that was worth the trouble."

"You did, then?"

Harry extended his hand to stroke the shorn top of the Doctor's head, and let his palm rest on the back of his neck. "Ask Rose. Or the Captain. Or Donna. Or Jo. Or Sarah-Jane. Or Jamie. Or Victoria. Or Donatello. Almost everyone who ever travelled with you and a crowd of people whose life you saved would tell you the same." He grinned, and took a step backwards before the Doctor moved to shake him off.

"That wasn't a yes," the Doctor objected.

What it was, was a shameless self-promoting show of how much Harry knew, or pretended to know, about the Doctor's history of traipsing over the universe with human companions and saving civilisations. Also, like a troll hiding under the bridge, he just had to throw that unknown name in there. What if the Doctor would meet another Donna tomorrow and mistake her for _the_ Donna? Harry was just a walking complication. And a disobedient one, at that.

"It was something you can believe," Harry said. "You wouldn't have accepted something as ambiguous and insubstantial as 'yes.'" That was a lie. Harry was a lying liar. Worse, he was a _foreshadowing_ lying liar.

"Do you ever travel with me?" the Doctor inquired, hoping for a resounding 'no' in response. Harry wasn't what he looked for in a travelling companion. They would get stuck arguing over some universal truth, or the seven basic axioms, or even whether the Laws could be broken without crossing the event horizon, and forget that there was an emergency happening around them. It would be like a smart-people version of getting lost in one another eyes, only they'd be getting lost in each other's mind and that would lead to delays in the saving-worlds process that the Doctor just couldn't afford, seeing as he usually arrived in the nick of time as it was.

"Not consistently," Harry assured him. "I've never been your companion… except in the biblical sense. I mostly travel on my own."

So far so good. This was why Holmes had Watson and Poirot tolerated Hastings. If Holmes and Poirot ever had to share breathing space, body-parts would fly. That just didn't work. It inevitably resulted in individuals like Beyond Birthday – what a stupid name, too – or Dr Jekyll.

Harry petted the TARDIS again and said: "Meet me on Car'Antares the day after the Kakumei. We'll make a date of it. You tell my younger self when you see me."

"You are very certain that I will want to meet you," the Doctor protested, feeling inordinately defensive.

Harry wasn't taken in by the balderdash. "You will," he said with a shrug. "If only to assuage your curiosity. Oh, and I think I've figured out what else I've got to do before I can go home."

"What?" the Doctor yelped before his mind wrapped itself around the rapid switch of topic, and he scowled at the deeper shadow where he could hear faint scratching against the grille covering the air-vent shaft. "Oi, you three! No apes in the ventilation system!"

"Told you," Jack said to the macaque, which turned its behind on him (it was better to stop thinking for a moment there, because the analogies were offering themselves) and begged either pity or a banana from Rose.

Harry surveyed them with patronising tolerance. "There's a party to which you're invited. All three of you – and Mickey, too, if he feels like it. Isle of Skye, Loch Coruisk, twenty-one seventy-" He nodded to the Doctor. "-you know the exact date. It's a 'we survived the Cybermen invasion' party. See you, Little Red Riding Hood. Watch out for the big Bad Wolf." He set out toward the door, obviously intending to walk out of the TARDIS , never mind that he belonged into the three hundred and fiftieth millennium and a completely different galaxy; he paused a couple of steps before he reached the door and turned. "Oh, and Jack? _Obliviate_."

Rose, even with her hands full of a frightened animal, managed to guide the dizzy Jack to sit down. However, the Doctor wasted precious seconds checking up on them, and only saw the door falling shut when he turned back to read Harry the riot act for repeatedly attacking his companions.

That wasn't nice at all.

He went over, opened the door, and checked the immediate surroundings. There was bright pink ocean as far as eye could see – the TARDIS was perched on a miniscule island – about ten-foot-by-ten-foot in the middle of several similarly-sized islands. Harry was nowhere to be seen, and the TARDIS obstinately claimed that the only life within several miles' distance were some fish.

"That…" he mused, closing the door behind himself, "was strange. In fact, it was way past strange, and deep into the territory of odd. Perhaps even bordering on _weird_."

"Doctor?" Rose asked. "What are we going to do with the ape?"

The childish part of the Doctor wanted to reply 'Call it Koschei,' while the responsible part insisted on finding a circus where it could live in comfort and entertain other primates with its aggravating tendencies. Then again, they had just received an invitation to a little brouhaha less than two centuries off from where they currently were.

He grinned. "We return it to sender, of course."


	2. River

Taking Advantage: River

x

_2,032 Earthtime, Earth, Great Britain_

x

It was eerily silent. The smell of blood was thick in the air, cloying. It was cold, too. All warmth had gone out of the gaily decorated room. The flames in the fireplace paled to blue, bathing the scene in ghostly light.

A beautiful young woman with the first hint of laugh lines on her face stood next to the Christmas tree, smile frozen on her lips.

Harry took a step forwards. His legs, surprisingly, carried him to his son's Petrified form with rigid stubbornness.

Albus stared at him, pupils blown wide to hide the usually vivid green of his eyes. He looked insane.

"W-why…" Ginny gasped. She clawed at her throat. A moment later she fainted.

Harry was glad for it. There would be no explanations found here, no closure. Albus was but a tool in the hands of another entity, a plaything used to murder, not unlike as if he were under the Imperius.

"What are you?" Harry asked instead, moving so that he couldn't see the dead body of his eldest child. There would be time to feel later. Now, in the blithe tranquility of complete detachment, he had the capacity to act.

"You know what I am, _Master_!" Albus crowed, giving Harry a wide, toothy grin. "You cannot be rid of me that easily-"

x

_2,043 Earthtime, Earth, Great Britain_

x

When the red mist in front of Harry's eyes dispersed, there were ragged bits and pieces of black cloth and slimy flesh the colour of rot strewn over the floors. He spat out a bit of blood – he'd bitten his tongue _again_ – and off-handedly brushed his robes.

"W-what… Merlin's balls on a stick!" Minister Prewett's voice announced vulgarly and graphically.

Harry snorted, leant against the wall of the holding cell and crossed his arms, tapping the sleek shaft of his wand against his bicep. He licked his lower lip, unsurprised by the coppery taste. "That's what happens when you force your best Auror into early retirement, Minister," he said nonchalantly.

Prewett came to a halt at the threshold of the holding cell, lips curled in disgust, unwilling to sully the soles of her obviously expensive manticore-hide shoes with the gore.

"You were caught desecrating the memorial of Albus Dumbledore, Potter!" yelled out Pritchard, the head bootlicker of the newest generation of bootlickers, hiding behind a burly senior Auror Jenkins and peering over his shoulder.

Really, the Ministry had not changed at all in the past… oh, wait… forty years. Not that Harry had changed much, either, but that was hardly the point.

The point was: "When you stick me into a confined space with dementors, you're asking for trouble, Minister."

There was a mutter of dissent among Prewett's entourage. The woman herself paled and pressed her lips together, a lot like McGonagall would have done once upon a time – Merlin bless the old madcat – and then composed herself. One had to admire such political acumen. "The presence of dementors is a routinely utilised method of interrogation, _Mr_ Potter."

Harry laughed a short, barking laugh. Most of the Aurors took a subconscious step away from him. "Look, Lady… I've worked for this institution for three bloody decades. I know all the approved and non-approved and secretly-but-not-officially approved methods of anything and everything." No prisoner would be moved to talk when there was a dementor in the room. Sometimes it helped to promenade one up and down the corridor, but the only time a dementor (not to speak about three – they really must have wanted to be iron-clad) was brought in was when the prisoner was judged too dangerous to be left alive. "You wanted to be rid of me. That's fair enough."

Jenkins and two others raised their wands, but they were still waiting for either a sign of aggression or an order.

"It's just that you've overestimated yourself – or underestimated me. It's okay. I'm not angry. It's no worse than what Voldemort's done. So, why don't we _forget_ about it?" Harry suggested, grinning a little. After all, he had worked in the Ministry for _three decades_. He knew the exact tone one was supposed to use while pointing out that he had some juicy blackmail on the opposition.

What juicier blackmail could there be than a blatant attempt to kill Harry Potter, the once and again saviour of the wizarding world and the much-pitied father of two dead sons?

"What do you want?" Prewett demanded, looking at him as if he were a rogue Basilisk.

Harry shrugged. "I'll let you know," he said, and Apparated out of the Ministry, casually ripping through three layers of anti-Apparition wards.

x

A month later Harry was standing in the Minister's office, wearing what amounted to highest fashion in the wizarding world (it was still a robe, but there were no frills, and he quite liked the embroidery) and this time all commentary regarding the wand – _his_ wand, whether or not he had pilfered it from anyone's grave – remained unvoiced. His executive committee consisted of two witches of roughly his age; they took the chairs prepared for visitors, while Harry remained standing between them and returning Prewett's artificially sweet smile.

"It's the renaissance of the superstition of the Middle Ages," Harry said. "Only then witchcraft was the Devil's work, and now it's just cool."

Prewett shook her head, still arguing even though it was more than obvious that Harry had already won. "It seems risky. What if the muggles see through it? We're handing them knowledge on a silver platter!"

Miss Chant, at Harry's left side, smiled and mock-benignly pointed out: "Technically, it's on paper."

Miss Jones, on Harry's right, was far more helpful: "There's almost nothing useful in the books – the story's been edited for children. The most authentic moment is Mr Potter almost killing Malfoy with an unknown curse. We'd all been idiots, and we'd been carrying lethal weapons around like toys since we were eleven. Mr Potter's version of the story just passed over almost all the blood and gore."

Harry suppressed a grin. Megan Jones had been his classmate at Hogwarts, and although they had not frequented the same circles back then, she was friends with Hermione. He didn't know the other witch, but apparently she was reliable – Hermione said so, and he had learnt not to doubt Hermione long ago.

"Also," Harry added, "a person in a robe and a pointy hat, walking down a London street in the nineteen hundreds would have been thought insane, dangerous, and probably taken by the police and interred in an asylum. That same person today would inspire some eye-rolls as yet another crazy fan." And how come none of that rang a bell in anyone's mind? Was it just wizarding folk being inherently stupid, or was it a problem with people in general thinking linearly to the exclusion of any other possibility?

"Mhm," Miss Jones agreed. "Purebloods really fail at upholding the Statute of Secrecy. No offence meant, Minister."

Prewett tried to smile. Harry didn't envy her the situation. She was facing a trio of muggle-raised people, of whom one had nasty blackmail material on her, one a nasty sense of humour, and one the nasty nature of a trained lawyer.

On the other hand, he had zero compassion for cutthroat politicians who had tried to kill him.

"None taken," Prewett pressed through clenched teeth. "Of course, muggles present a continuous threat to our way of life, and we must implement every feasible measure to ameliorate our defences. It is to be expected that even the Statute of Secrecy, so stringently enforced over the centuries, would become obsolete without any amendments."

Harry let the acidic sarcasm wash over him. Once upon a time he would have trembled under such a barrage and ultimately struck out against his enemy, but that would have been the easy way of dealing with the problem. If he put in more effort, if he maintained better self-control, the results of his work would last longer. Besides, if he had been the type to take the easy way out, he would have jumped off a church tower when he was a child.

"It is heartening to see such a progressive attitude in a Minister who comes from a traditionalist background," Harry shot back. "If you would sign-" he gestured toward the draft of the Statute of Secrecy amendment he and his two companions were presenting.

Prewett read it – it was really simple, short, to the point. Harry just wasn't a politician, and he didn't have the patience to wait for weeks until Hermione's lawyers would put together a fancy version of a five-sentence law he needed passed.

Prewett signed. She grimaced as if it pained her, but she did it without protest. She could glare all she wanted; she was aware of the unspoken Harry Potter manifesto. Anyone could go after him and do their best, but the first movement, however innocuous, done to endanger his family or friends, and he would come down on them like a half-ton piano from the sky. So far only a handful had tried. None of them had lived to speak of the experience.

"Thank you, Minister," Miss Jones said equanimously.

"Let's get the ball rolling, Mr Potter," Miss Chant prompted.

Harry nodded. "Pleasure doing business with you," he said to the Minister. He waited until Miss Jones packed away one of the signed copies of the amendment, then he gripped both witches' shoulders and Apparated them away, once again shattering the Ministry's wards.

Sometimes he just liked being contrary.

They landed on the side of a hill. The day was damp and cold, but the Sun made a valid attempt to remind the people of its presence every now and then.

"Are you sure this is the right thing to do, Potter?" Miss Jones worried, reading through the amendment for the umpteenth time. "No offence, but I know muggles, and some of them _will_ speculate."

"It doesn't matter." Harry shrugged. "Megan, how many wizards are even aware of the contact Earth has been maintaining with extraterrestrials?"

"Too few to speak of," Miss Chant offered, all too happily.

"You see?" Harry asked. "The only way this culture will survive to the next century is if we create a preserve and concentrate all the traditionalists in it. Also, we should start on new info-packages for the muggleborns and… Thanks for reminding me! I need to have a quick chat with Mr Yates about artistic shortcuts. Hold down the fort while I'm gone."

Miss Jones packed away the parchment containing the new law, so she could freely wring her hands. "When are we going to contact the amanuensis?" she inquired worriedly.

"I've already done it," Harry replied, waving his hand to indicate that the issue really wasn't a cause for concern. "This just proves that the collective wizarding world can't see past the tip of its collective nose. The first book's been around since 1997."

"But…" Miss Jones' mouth hung open – the poor witch was _so_ scandalised. "Potter, that's illegal!"

Harry shrugged again. "Catch me if you can."

That was the thing about Apparition. You were limited by the three 'D's – destination, determination, deliberation. So, if Harry's destination was, say, July 1995, he was perfectly capable of getting there. Of course, since most people tended to bungle up their first attempts at Apparition, it was very likely that every such enterprising pioneer would end up splinched and scattered over several years, with no one capable of putting him back together…

But Harry was the Master of Death, and that solved the dying in a horrible, painful, gory fashion problem once and for all. He could add 'the first wizard to ever Apparate across four dimensions' to his resume, but he rather thought that this accomplishment belonged to the category of 'not for public consumption' together with his ability to destroy dementors and _in_ability to age.

Breeze rose and ruffled the pale green grass on the hillside.

Miss Chant chuckled and fondly shook her head: "Oh, aren't they just two peas in a pod?"

Miss Jones glanced at her, confused. "Who – what are you – oh, shoot!" She put her hands on her hips and glared at the spot from which Harry Potter, the Saviour, had just vanished. "There goes my political career."

Miss Chant patted her shoulder and confidentially leant closer, until Miss Jones had to blow a stray strand of Miss Chant's curly hair out of her face.

"Don't worry overmuch, darling," Miss Chant placated her. "The system's going down soon enough, anyway. You pack up your family and hop over the pond – there's always more than enough work for lawyers over there."

The first raindrops hit the ground and Miss Jones scrambled to pull on the hood of her cloak.

There was a crackle, like distant lightning. When she looked up, Miss Chant was gone, too.

x

_2,070 Earthtime, Earth, United Europe_

x

It was the year two thousand and seventy, according to the date on the letter from Hermione that demanded Harry's presence in London post haste.

Unfortunately for Hermione, the letter had been sitting on the windowsill of his apartment for several days, had soaked a couple of times during two separate storms, and remained barely legible and largely obsolete.

Harry figured that he might as well contact Hermione and ask if she had seen him during the week. The ability to Apparate through time (something which he had not admitted to anybody yet) had complicated his life _unimaginably_. True to his sense of adventure, he had tried to attend several historical events, including but not limited to the founding of Hogwarts, the Battle of Hastings, the final showdown between the British DMLE and Grindelwald's _Sturmzauberer_ (Dumbledore had kicked arse, but Harry had zapped few of the Germans and Frenchmen, too), and also his parents' wedding.

"Where have you been, mate?" Ron yelled at him nary a second after Harry had crossed the wards. "Hermione's been going spare-"

Fairly sure that he wasn't going to have to return to last week and save the world under Hermione's leadership, Harry relaxed.

"-and she said something about aliens! What does it mean 'aliens,' Harry? Is it like muggles? Or people from another country?"

"Something like that, Ron," Harry replied and smiled.

Somehow, Ron accepted that and grinned back. Going on ninety, he resembled his father rather a lot. As a typical pureblooded wizard, he didn't believe in extraterrestrials, and wasn't interested in Hermione's work at all. In fact, he had repeatedly called Harry's sanity into question after he'd found out that they sometimes worked together.

"She's not home. They're having some party at the MAGIC. All the boring four-eyed people are getting together to worship the god of books or something."

Harry nodded, suppressing a grimace. "Rose and Hugo?" he asked. Those two had enough of Hermione in them that he could talk to them. So did Hugo's wife and Rose's lover, as a matter of fact. Sometimes Harry wondered how on Earth Hermione could stand being around Ron for any length of time.

"She dragged them along," Ron complained long-sufferingly. "Say, mate, why don't you come in for a game? I already set up the board, but I play against myself every day-"

"Sorry," Harry replied. "I'll take a rain-check on that." He felt a little guilty: he had all the time in the world, and spent so little of it with his friends, and practically none with his family. He had dozens of excuses, but the fact remained that if he tried, he could have changed that.

He next Apparated to the HQ of the Magically Affiliated Guild for Institutional Continuation (Harry rather thought that this time Hermione not only managed to come up with a good acronym, but also admirably fogged the true aims of her association), where the young man on duty told him that everyone had gone to Loch Coruisk, so that was where Harry found himself.

Stars glittered overhead, since the sky was cleared by stringent weather-control, and the Moon shone brightly. There was a huge platform built partly above water, partly above the muddy banks, and filled with stalls, music, people and alcohol.

"What's going on?" he asked the first sober-looking person he met, which happened to be a curly-haired witch that seemed a bit familiar, which was mildly interesting as she looked forty years younger than Harry. Probably a Ministry-worker, since he had met too many of them during his career, and never had been able to remember all their names. She would have finished school around the time he was decommissioned.

"There's been an attempted alien invasion on the Moon," she said, smiling widely. "The Doctor stopped them. So, we celebrate not being upgraded."

Harry accepted the drink she handed him, but poured it into the Loch through a crack between two planks of the platform the moment her back was turned.

Another song started then – some of the classical muggle music that Rose, Lily, Lorcan and Louis endorsed so much.

_They're picking up pieces of me, while they're picking up pieces of you…_

"Rose!" the curly-haired witch called out suddenly, startling Harry. She stretched her hand out not to Hermione's daughter, but to an obviously confused blonde girl who had gone all muggle for the occasion. "Hello, dear. You know Harry, don't you?"

Harry scoffed. As if that qualified anyone to claim acquaintance with him. Eager to get rid of the strange women, he adopted the attitude that used to raise Snape's blood-pressure and scoffed: "Who doesn't?"

"Stiff upper lip, Harry," the curly-haired woman admonished with a laugh, and patted his shoulder before he could dodge. "Here, dance with Rose and play nice." She turned to the blonde – _Rose_ – and asked: "By the way, where is the Doctor?"

_On the back of my hand were directions I could understand…_

This was where Harry would have left, if there weren't too many dancing and laughing and drinking people surrounding him – and if the woman he had foolishly addressed hadn't stuck her claws into his arm.

Rose scratched her nose and puffed up her cheeks in muted exasperation. "He got caught up talking to some… Susan Foreman…?"

"Susan's here? Really?" the curly-haired witch exclaimed happily.

"Uh – could you let go of me?" Harry demanded, trying to pry claw-like nails from his flesh. "I don't want to start a fight in here, but I _will_ hex you if you don't take your hand off-"

"You know her?" Rose inquired, surprised, once again pulling the curly-haired demon's attention away from the issue of Harry's prompt liberation.

He didn't like being aggressive. He especially disliked being aggressive where other people could see and identify him. Sure, he was forever in the clear with the law, due to the combined factors of his power and his prestige, but he just didn't like attacking without the excuse of self-defence.

"I know _of_ her," the curly one replied. "She's the Doctor's granddaughter."

This was the instance when Harry not only heard what she said, but also listened to it, and the resulting auditory perception triggered the association of a memory so old and rarely revisited that he would have otherwise dismissed it as a fanciful dream.

…_it's a case in point, baby, that you never thought it through…_

"Wait!" he exclaimed. "You're talking about _the_ Doctor? The '_the_' Doctor? He's here?"

The women froze. Rose measured Harry from head to toes and scowled. There was recognition in her eyes, but also some confusion, as if she had finally placed Harry but he wasn't what she had expected to see. Well, he was used to that. Most people imagined him more buff. Or at least taller.

The curly-haired one shook her head. "He won't be what you're looking for, Harry."

"I just want to yell at him," Harry said. It wasn't the truth, of course. He had many, many questions he wanted to ask, because it was one thing to make promises to a fourteen year old boy to stop him from doing something mind-numbingly stupid, and an entirely different thing to make those sort of promises to someone who you knew would grow up to be immortal.

"He wouldn't know why you would be yelling," the witch explained.

Harry had to recollect the brief meeting from a long time ago, before he understood what the woman was implying. The he sighed. "…time-travellers."

"At least you know how your future friends feel, Harry," she said, smiling as if it all was oh so very entertaining. "Now go, have fun, and don't do anything you'd regret in the morning!"

She ducked into the crowd.

Harry remained rooted to the spot. He had not even gotten her name, and yet she implied that she knew about his ability to transcend time, and also that she knew the Doctor (it _was_ a relief to find that he had not actually _imagined_ the Doctor during his less mentally stable time at the Dursleys).

Rose gave him an awkward attempt on a smile, clasped her hands together and hunched her shoulders. "Uh… So, you don't remember me?"

"Should I?" Harry asked. He didn't think he had met her at the Ministry. For one, she was sort of memorable. Also, she knew the Doctor. Today, with his knowledge and experience, Harry firmly believed that the Doctor he had met had been an alien and had probably had a good laugh at Harry's tentative suggestion that he wasn't human.

…_it seems they've lost their powers; now all I'm left with is the hours…_

"Probably not," Rose admitted. "You told me how some people might have extraordinariness thrust upon them, but would not choose it."

"I did?" Harry asked. It sounded a little too Dumbledorean for his liking. "When?"

"…yesterday," she said, sticking the nail of her forefinger between her teeth. Then she realised what she was doing and quickly put her hands down. "Well, yesterday for me."

There was nothing Harry could say to that. Obviously, sometime in the future, he would meet this girl and they would talk, but right now he didn't have a clue about who she was – he didn't even have a real idea about who – or what – the Doctor was, and as far as he could tell the only entity connecting all these strange people who claimed acquaintance with him and didn't seem perplexed at the allusion of time-travelling was the Doctor.

Still, if the Doctor didn't know who Harry was, a meeting between them would be pointless.

"This is awkward," he remarked, briefly meeting Rose's eyes.

"Tell me about it," she replied, chuckling a bit and looking at her shoes. Then she collected herself, thrust her shoulders back and, raising her eyebrows, asked: "So, the Doctor? What did he do that made you want to yell at him? I mean, I want to yell at him two or three times a day, but… I…"

"You're nosy," Harry observed. Absently, he noted that the song had changed again, this time to some pop diva's shrieking about unfulfilled love.

Rose shrugged. "He likes nosy people. They always sniff out trouble for him to enjoy."

"When I met him, there was a couple with him," Harry said. "Amy and Rory."

Rose paused for a moment, chewing the inside of her cheek. Then she shook her head. "Never heard the names. That explains why he wouldn't know what you're yelling about." A deep sadness – the kind of sadness that inadvertently reminded Harry of Albus and James – twisted her face for a second. "You met a future version of him."

Harry knew a little about love and loss. In fact, he knew more about love and loss than the average human, but he was only learning, taking his baby-steps, in the world of beings that outlived everyone around them. If he was guessing right, the Doctor tended to deal with the loss of friends by finding new friends, in a constant carousel of getting-to-know-one-another and coping-with-their-death. If that was right, it was hardly surprising that the two of them would be drawn to each other just for being long-lived.

This Rose wasn't like that. She was temporary, fragile, like Ginny and Lily, like Hermione and her Rose, and Hugo, Ron, Luna, Neville… like practically everyone Harry knew.

Such a short live shouldn't be filled with sadness.

"Dance?" he asked, offering his hand.

Rose gave him a shallow but admirably brave smile. "Sure."

They danced to several songs; Rose laughed at Harry's lack of coordination and he grumbled about his two left feet (which wasn't exactly true – he had proved often enough that he had superb coordination in combat), and finally, when she was laughing and had forgotten about the couple from the future, and when they were both too thirsty to continue horsing around, Harry bought her a bottle of butterbeer from a nearby stall.

She was just commenting about its unique flavour when a tall man in a black leather jacket grabbed the bottle out of her hand, downed the rest of the butterbeer, and sat it down on the stall's counter with a loud clang.

"Hey!" Harry protested.

Then he met the stranger's eyes. They were icy-cold blue, his expression was edgy, fiercely unhappy, despite a grin that stretched his cheeks.

Harry shivered and reached for his wand.

"Rose," the man said. "We're leaving."

"Already?" Rose cried out, voice rising to higher frequencies than comfortable for the audience. She pouted, but let herself be taken away, only giving Harry a timid, cute wave.

"Oh, and Harry?" the man turned back before they left.

"Do I know you?" Harry asked. The look in those eyes was unfamiliar. He recalled the Doctor he had met only vaguely, but he knew, he _felt_ that that Doctor's eyes were old, carrying a lot of hurt, but also a lot of compassion and love of life. This man had none of the latter, and yet he was a '_the_' Doctor, indubitably, never mind that he looked completely different.

Maybe there was a whole race. A planet. Maybe their species was 'Doctor' and it got lost in translation.

"Depending on the subjectivity and personal-timeline-reference… yes or no. This is yours," the man said, and set a collared and leashed conjured monkey on Harry's shoulder.

"Is that some kind of metaphor?" Harry asked, stunned, turning his head to the side to lock gazes with a similarly confused monkey. "Oh, fine. _Finite incantatem_."

x

_2,076 Earthtime, Earth, United Europe_

x

The cottage was quiet when Harry sat down at the kitchen table and rested his chin on his hand.

Lily and Lorcan came in perhaps a minute later; Lily carrying a basket with eggs from the henhouse, Lorcan a churn with fresh milk. They set out to make breakfast, working in tandem, with ease that told of their long relationship. It had been more than thirty-years, but they were both 'progressive youths' (_had been_ 'progressive youths' when they were youths) and considered marriage to be an obsolete institution.

Harry didn't mind. They caught a lot of flak from Molly, and later on from Ginny, who had gotten it in her head that they could give her grandchildren if only they would finally tie the knot. Harry was their staunchest supporter – apart from him the only one of the elder generation who understood was Hermione, and even she wasn't over the moon about their decision.

"Coffee or tea?" Lorcan asked, lifting a pot in either hand.

"Tea today," Harry said.

Lily gave him a suspicious glance. Harry chose tea whenever he was sad, melancholy, depressed or aimless. It didn't happen often to him, and usually it was followed by what his friends and family called 'disappearances.'

Ginny came down the stairs then, in her pyjamas and her dressing robe as she was used to from the Burrow, unfolding the Daily Prophet.

Harry anxiously tapped his fingers against the tabletop. He couldn't _not_ notice that Ginny had, as the first of her siblings, gone grey. She was still beautiful in his eyes, of course, but she was growing old too rapidly. She was only ninety-five. By rights, she should still have some red in her hair. He knew it was his fault.

He might not have done it intentionally, but there was no denying that it was Harry who had brought tragedy into their life, first due to the prophecy, then because of the Hallows. He had hidden under glamours since he was twenty-four and Hermione had gently but uncompromisingly ordered him to use magic to disguise his appearance, but Ginny knew – in fact, Harry often released his glamours at home – that he remained forever seventeen.

"Morning, mum," Lily sang out, and poured Ginny her customary tea.

"Morning, Ginny," Lorcan chimed in.

Absurdly, Harry knew that if anyone was nosily looking in through the window, they would have thought that Harry was Ginny's grandson – Lily and Lorcan's child.

"You're leaving," Ginny muttered into the front page of the newspaper, with her uncanny ability to tap into Harry's thought-process.

"Yes," Harry confirmed. There was nothing he could have gained by denying his intentions. "I'm sorry, Ginny. I should have done it years ago."

Ginny explosively signed and lifted her mug to her lips. She took a few sips, and set it back down. "I'm…" she choked a little and turned to meet Harry's eye, "…despite everything… I… It wasn't your fault, Harry."

"Thank you," Harry replied. He didn't believe it, but the mere knowledge that Ginny didn't blame him felt a bit like absolution.

"You won't be coming back, dad?" Lily asked, sitting down heavily. Lorcan put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed.

If he was honest with himself, Harry couldn't really see why they would miss him. "Maybe…" he allowed. "But probably not, Lily. This monster will always stay with me – it said so much. The best I can do is stay away from people."

There was a while of silence as they all recalled James' murder and Albus' subsequent death. All because of a misunderstanding – because no one had told Harry that he should read the fine print before he went making deals with Death.

"But…" Lily whispered.

"Send me an invitation if you two ever decide to get married?" Harry suggested, pulling weak smiles. "A few hours of my presence won't hurt anyone." Hopefully.

"We will, Mr Potter," Lorcan solemnly promised.

"I love you, dad," Lily said through tears.

"I love you, too," Harry replied, feeling like a total bastard. He stretched his hand and put it on his wife's elbow. "I'm so sorry, Ginny."

Ginny shook her head, dislodging a couple of shoulder-length silvery strands. "Not your fault. Take care of yourself?"

Harry snorted. It was all he could do not to sneer. "It's not like anything can kill me."

"But you can still be hurt," Ginny implored. "You _never_ stay safe."

Harry shrugged and stood from the table. He put his mug into the sink, kissed his wife's and daughter's cheeks, shook Lorcan's hand, and stood on the threshold. "Safe is boring. Besides, I have my title of 'saviour' to live up to." He smiled and waved. "Bye, girls. Be good."

He Disapparated.

x

_2,208 Earthtime, Earth, United States of America_

x

There was a Japanese woman in a red beret.

There was a unit of muscular men and women in red berets aiming their various weapons at him.

Harry nodded to himself. "I don't suppose you've got any experience dealing with the Carrionites?" he asked. "It's just – they're infesting our preserve. It's damn hard to differentiate between a hag and a Carrionite."

"Identify yourself!" barked the woman with Japanese features but with a native accent.

"I'm Harry," he said, spreading his hands to (misleadingly) indicate that he was unarmed. "I am contacting the UNIT on behalf of the MAGIC."

"He's one of the Doctor's, Lieutenant Doumeki," spoke a newcomer dressed in a flight-suit.

"And I suppose we must all bow down to the Doctor's wisdom?" the Japanese snarked, but she did off-handedly direct her soldiers to put their arms down. "Surrender your weapons, Mr Harry!"

"I don't carry weapons," Harry replied. "Scan me."

They did. The scan came back informing them of the ring on his finger, the pin that held together his lowermost rib on the left side (legacy of Dudley) and what apparently read as antimatter in his pocket. They grumbled and rolled their eyes at the last reading, unfamiliar with magic and its ever tumultuous relationship with electricity. Once again, Harry had to admit the inarguable practicality of the wand.

"I don't expect you have any official identification?" Lieutenant Doumeki asked with a really unnecessary amount of sarcasm.

"No," Harry said, and paused to think if maybe it wouldn't be better to make contacts in the future with the face of a thirty-year-old. He just didn't like aging glamours. It wasn't vanity, exactly – more like conceit, in that he wanted to make a name for himself in the interplanetary community, a name that would be recognised and respected regardless of his appearance… oh, okay, he wanted to be in the same league as the Doctor. Sue him.

"I know him, Lieutenant," claimed the newcomer, who after removing her protective helmet turned out to be a smiling woman. "We've worked together on a project in the past."

Harry would have asked 'We did?' if that hadn't negated the effect of the woman's claim of acquaintance. Also, he had to admit that he had worked with a great amount of people on great many project in the past century and half, and he had never been especially good at remembering faces. Or names. Or numbers, when it came down to it.

"Species?" the Lieutenant barked.

"Human," Harry replied, instead of the smiling woman at whom the question had been directed. "Planet of origin Earth. Clearance never specified but – well, the Doctor's not very good with Secrecy Acts, is he?" He was talking out of his arse here, because he had not seen the Doctor in about a century. He only ever heard about him, about his saving this world and that, a whole lot of space hearsay filtered through diplomatic and economical channels that connected the Solar system to other systems.

"Full name?" Lieutenant Doumeki demanded.

"Harry Potter," Harry said off-handedly. Fortunately, what little of his reputation had percolated into the muggle world in twenty eighties had long since been forgotten.

"You know that the Doctor's companions are exempt from the Protocol, Lieutenant," the smiling woman in flight-suit said, shouldering her way in between Harry and the armed red-beretted unit. "Let _me_ take care of this. Come on, Harry-" She latched onto Harry's elbow. "-I'll show you the files on the Carrionites in our archives. The late General Smith had provided a very detailed description of her encounter with them-"

"Excuse me," Harry cut in, dragged past a spatial open-air office with dozens of operators online, "but who are you? I'm afraid I don't remember you."

"I go by Major Harmony Waters now, Harry," the woman replied, exchanging a little wave with the guard on duty as they walked round a corner and turned to descend a dimly lit staircase leading to the basement. "UNIT is an exciting change of pace for me."

Alright, Harry could conclude that this woman was 'one of the Doctor's;' in fact, she was apparently more 'one of the Doctor's' than Harry was, or at least than Harry was presently. That made her a possible time-traveller, too. It was pretty much guaranteed that Harry wouldn't remember her.

She probably knew a future version of Harry.

She certainly seemed way too familiar with… everything.

"You're-"

"Perfectly willing to make your life easier," she stated. "Why look a gift horse into the mouth?"

"So you don't end up like the Trojans?" Harry suggested.

Harmony burst into a fit of laughter, weighing more heavily onto Harry's arm. "You're precious!" She gradually calmed down and then gave Harry a fond smile. "Just be patient. You'll find each other again. You'll _always_ find each other again."

"But… How-"

"We're here, Harry, dear," she cut in, and pulled Harry over to the one open wing of a double-winged door. She pointed inside, into a hall washed in glaring white light. "Carrionites are under 'C,' lowermost bookshelf on the left, a plastic box marked with red-marker. Go ahead."

Then she returned his arm and took her leave.

Harry was very, very tempted to follow her and demand more information, but he had more important things to do than satiate his curiosity. Cynthia Jones, the current Head of MAGIC and Harry's great-great-granddaughter who had never officially met him (and, as far as he could tell, thought him long since dead), needed the data on Carrionites promptly so she could neutralise the threat; otherwise not only would be the preserve – and with it sixty percent of magical beings on Earth – destroyed, but also an alien invasion would gain a foothold that was already protected against most muggle technology.

And that would have been bad.

Harry walked into the hall, exchanged nods with an old man in a white coat – some kind of glorified librarian – and turned a corner into an aisle between shelves. He had expected a computer, not a traditional archive. This place reminded him of the erstwhile Ministry.

He wasn't sure why he was doing this. Inertia, perhaps. He didn't have anyone he cared for left.

Ginny had gone first, bowed under the weight of tragedy. Then Hermione, old before her time with stress, and succumbing to medical complications after an extremist attack on the MAGIC headquarters. Following her were Luna, Rolf and Lysander, who had disappeared during an expedition to the Himalayas. Next was Fleur, with Bill weeks later, and then the family Harry had sworn to himself he would protect from the shadows fell one by one like dominoes…

Harry Potter was alone on the planet. Maybe it was time to move on.

x

_11,868 Earthtime, Vel Consadene_

x

Harry opened his eyes. There was a nondescript grey ceiling above him. He blinked. The ceiling remained unchanged.

Memories trickled in. Slowly, gradually, Harry recalled that he was trying to forget, and why, and it really had been long enough since that time to think about what had happened. Those people – his family, the annoying humane part of him insisted – had been buried and forgotten. Today, they were less than a footnote in history books.

"Awake?" an amused female voice asked.

"Where am I?" Harry counter-questioned.

"Afterlife?" she suggested and laughed. "Aren't you just the pinnacle of biological recycling?"

Harry turned his head to the side. There was a fluffy pillow beneath it, but his wrists were shackled to a headboard, and he frankly doubted that was for sexual purposes.

The woman who had obviously put him into this situation gave him a smile that was probably meant to be patronising, but ultimately came across as just arrogant.

"Perhaps not," she allowed, "but it should be afterlife. You were quite assuredly deceased when I acquired you." She didn't even look particularly surprised.

Harry would have called her on the bluff – he knew better than anyone that he didn't _get_ dead, but then telling abducting strangers that they were free to torture him without having to fear that he would expire on them was a mistake he had made only once.

"I feel alive," Harry offered. "Although I'm not enjoying my current predicament."

The woman laughed again. "I apologise for the limitations of my hospitality, but I have never been good at denying my curiosity. In my defence, I am very good at denying other people's curiosity."

Harry shrugged – the handcuffs were designed to detain, not to hurt him, so he did have that amount of freedom. He turned away from his captor and went back to staring at the ceiling.

"Oh, you're precious!" the woman laughed _again_.

Harry, knowing that he could be free and gone with just a little focus, failed to muster an emotional reaction to the provocation. This made his captor unhappy and would, probably, lead to torture-

"Are you familiar with Jack Harkness?" she asked.

Harry closed his eyes and forced himself back into unconsciousness.

x

"I knew exactly what to do about him!" a semi-familiar alto argued. "Bring him to you, of course. If the mountain won't come to Mohammed-"

"Where did you find him?" a man asked curiously.

There were sounds in the background, strange, unidentifiable, clicking, whirring, humming and muted distant roars. Unbidden, the faded picture of Dumbledore's office came to the forefront of Harry's mind.

"Vel Consadene," the woman said. "He was shot with a raygun, right in front of me."

There was a beat of silence, and then the man said, elated: "Extraordinary!"

Thank you, Harry thought sarcastically.

"I can tell that he has no connection to Harkness-"

"Obviously!" the man exclaimed. "Welcome aboard the TARDIS, stranger!"

TARDIS, Harry thought dazedly. That meant…

Anyway, the gig was up, so Harry opened his eyes. There was a grinning man leaning over him, with a buzzing green light in his hand – that was as much as Harry could distinguish without his glasses. He knew where he was, of course, and he also knew in whose company he was, but since they didn't appear to know him, he figured it would be better to first figure out what was going on.

Under the green light of the sonic screwdriver, the manacles clicked and fell off of Harry's wrists, and he was offered a hand to help him sit up.

"This is unexpected!" the Doctor – because it couldn't have been anyone else – proclaimed, and started poking Harry's arm. "Human, one hundred percent Earth-born human! The very original! Should wear a trademark! Hormone levels indicate the twentieth or twenty-first century Earth, at the latest! Somatotropin, huh – you, my friend, should still be growing! Thymus atrophied – yes, right, obviously… You are seventeen…" he finished in wonder.

"Forever seventeen," the woman spoke up superiorly. "_Undying_."

It took Harry until now to place her. She was either very long-lived, or a time-traveller as well. He still wasn't certain about her name. Something about the sound of nature, he recalled.

"He's nothing like Jack!" the Doctor protested vociferously. He turned to Harry and demanded: "Tell River you're nothing like Jack… What's your name?"

"What's yours?" Harry returned. "And where are my glasses?"

"River?" the Doctor asked. "You do not actually _need_ them, do you?"

"I'm ancient-fashioned like that," Harry retorted, sliding into casual banter all too easily. He had to mentally kick himself. This Doctor didn't know him yet. It was all wrong, of course, but with the amount of wrong they confronted bi-daily, it was pretty normal. Harry would put the Doctor right as soon as he found out what was going on.

The woman – River, it seemed – handed Harry's glasses to the Doctor, who passed them on to Harry.

"Better!" the Doctor praised. "You look all John-Lennon-like-"

"Hello, Doctor," Harry cut in, unable to suppress his smile. This was the incarnation he had met first – a long time ago, in 1995, as a naïve child who had thought it would be easier to just give up, and who had needed the Doctor to smack – or, rather, _instill_ – some sense into him. There was no other person in the universe quite so eclectically straightforward and going off on multiple tangents leading into nowhere at once. And he was quite chic, too, with longish hair and a rakish smile that didn't reach his eyes, and prominent lines on his forehead. A bit more boyish than what Harry was used to, but no less scrumptious than ever.

No more iconic than ever, too. And, in what Harry considered to be a huge scam, the new incarnation of the Doctor actually looked _fragile_.

"I'm popular!" the Doctor said happily.

"Eminently noticeable," River noted.

"You've died. Again," Harry muttered glumly. "Moronic alien."

"He _knows_ you," River pointed out. She probably thought she was being endearing. And she was – to the Doctor, who enjoyed being ribbed almost as much as he enjoyed hijacking other people's wonderment.

"I don't," Harry protested. He knew bits and pieces and how to make the man not sad. It was mostly enough to love him. "I don't think anyone does."

The Doctor glanced up, meeting Harry's eyes. Harry attempted some rudimentary Legilimency – the Doctor would notice this, of course, but Harry wasn't doing anything more aggressive than transmitting the feeling of familiarity.

"All wrong!" the Doctor protested, blinking. "That's all wrong! You're all wrong! Third-millenium humans have practically zero psychic ability!" He poked Harry's chest with a finger. "You can't exist! Unless someone created you specifically-"

"My parents created me very specifically," Harry replied with centuries of jadedness seeping through. "There were matrimony, coitus, gravidity and natum involved."

"Smartass," River mock-teased. "How are you _certain_ you are human?"

"All human," the Doctor confirmed, as he was reassured by the readings of his _new_ sonic screwdriver. "And the TARDIS likes him. He's an impossible impossibility – somehow that makes him possible!"

"Like the product of two negative numbers being positive?" River inquired, chuckling at what appeared to be a private joke.

"No." The Doctor absently shook his head and scanned Harry with the sonic once again. "Not like that at all."

Harry clucked his tongue. "You're thinking negation of a negation, but that would make me a tautology, and I'm not ready for omnipresence, thank you very much. Then I'd actually sort of be the evil cousin of the TARDIS… thanks but no, thanks."

River gaped. A little. There were definite hints of a slack jaw, even though she, admittedly, carried the look well.

The Doctor laughed – a hard, honest, rib-cracking laughter that was so rare in his existence that Harry could actually recall seeing it before only twice.

"Oh, he knows you," River deadpanned. "Better than himself, I wager." She reached down to her belt, too, and Harry figured that this would be the good time to neutralise the potential threat and give the Doctor a headbutt.

"_Petrificus_," he said, aiming two fingers at River. She froze with her hand on top of her gun.

The Doctor stopped laughing very rapidly, and there was a cross of a reproachful and a concerned expression on his face. "That wasn't friendly at all. I thought we were all friendly here-"

"Tell that to the woman with the weapon," Harry replied, glancing at River, who was watching them because, in the end, that was all she could do. "I didn't harm her. I can release her at any time. No after-effects." And, honestly, it was a pain to explain himself, when the Doctor should have known pretty much _everything_ there was to know about Harry – his motives and abilities especially.

The Doctor hesitated, but when the TARDIS didn't perceive Harry as a threat, he decided to risk turning away and scanning River with the screwdriver. His scowl suggested that the reading was as nonsensical as Harry knew it would be.

"Nothing?" the man muttered. "There can't be _nothing_."

"Headbutt me," Harry demanded.

"Nuh-uh," the Doctor refused. "That hurts."

"Please?" Harry tried.

Doctor looked at River, at the sonic, at the central column of the TARDIS and finally at Harry. Then he resolutely shook his head. "No."

"Fine," Harry agreed. "Let's do it the easy way, then." He took a deep breath. "Doctor, you're married."

The onslaught of released information literally knocked the Doctor off his feet. Harry would have caught him, except that in a vulnerable state the man tended to lash out reflexively, and Harry didn't fancy getting bruised for his trouble. He placated himself with the knowledge that he _had_ tried to do this the hard way.

While the Doctor sat up, pulled his knees to his chest, hugged them and hid his face, processing the quantum of new old data, Harry snapped the manacles around River's wrists and locked them with a little magic – he certainly didn't trust anything that belonged to her. He was fairly certain that her calibre of criminal wouldn't use equipment that she hadn't rigged.

Then he released the Petrification.

"Doctor?" she asked, worried.

"Give him a moment," Harry chastised. "He's just had a nasty shock."

"Not nasty…" the Doctor slurred in protest, but he didn't lift his head.

It made Harry smile. "Okay. Still a shock, though. Let him chew through it, and he'll be back to tell you some uncomfortable truths, River. Or is it River? I can never tell with you con people."

River's countenance was perfect. "Sorry, sweetheart. You've got me mixed up with someone." Then she frowned when she found out the handcuffs still held, despite whatever signal she had sent to have them unlock.

"I'm sure," Harry smiled at her.

She impotently tugged at her hands. "I can see why he likes you," she conceded.

Harry just nodded, not really caring about her endorsement. He was a little concerned about the Doctor's reaction.

He shouldn't have been, really. Seconds later, the Doctor sprang to his feet, grabbed the sides of Harry's head and pulled him into a wonderfully thorough kiss, ignoring River's indignant yelp.

"Oh…" he mumbled, pulling away, close-eyed and half-lost in some memory, "That's it. That's exactly it – tuna and treacle, cappuccino, Rachmaninov and Harry! I remember that." He opened his eyes and tried to glare, but he was having major problems suppressing his happiness. It kind of shone out through his eyes. "Why didn't I remember before?"

Harry snorted.

"Remember what?" River demanded. "Doctor, what did he do to you?"

"You mind?" Harry asked.

The Doctor shook his head. "Be nice. I'll want to talk to her later."

"_Stupefy_," Harry intoned. He did make sure River didn't break her neck falling down, but he wasn't especially gentle. When the Doctor tried to give him a look, Harry remained unrepentant. "She tried to usurp you. For non-philanthropic purposes."

The Doctor glanced at River's prone form and saddened. "I almost began to believe her. I could imagine us – me and her. We could have had something. Been something."

"You were," Harry said. "And for a lie, it's been fairly magnificent. But I'm a selfish little human, and I want you back."

"Magic's wonderful," the Doctor proclaimed. "One of very few things in this universe that completely stump me."

Harry gave him a kiss – he could now, so he was going to milk the chance for what it was worth – and took the non sequitur as a prompt to explain.

"I put our relationship under Fidelius. No one whom we don't tell personally will know. Otherwise – you know, River could have used that, too." Apparently, the enchantment had obscured everything that led to their 'marriage' – if it could be called that – as well, and from the Doctor, too, which, honestly, made sense. He would have had to be there for the casting to remain in the know, and Harry had been in a bit of a hurry back then and couldn't afford to wait for an opportune moment to phone and arrange a rendezvous.

"A relationship under Fidelius? That's possible?"

Harry shrugged. "I'm coming to the conviction that the only limit to magic is imagination."

The Doctor gave him the sort of look that his companions tended to give to him, especially in the beginning of their travel, when they were still very green. "It certainly helps that you're the most powerful mage in the whole expanding universe," he mentioned mock-nonchalantly.

"I'm not that sure I am," Harry protested. There was some difficulty in trying to compare himself to other magic-users when magic still wasn't universally recognised as scientific reality, and the only known mystical supreme beings were the likes of the Beast and its son Abaddon, of whom neither was exactly available for a friendly duel. "With me, it's more a matter of strength of will. So, you could reasonably say that I am the most willful person in the universe – but you do give me a run for my money."

The Doctor opened his mouth to argue, then reconsidered and closed it. The optimistic part of Harry wanted to believe that the man realised he didn't absolutely have to win every contest.

It was summarily disappointed, when the Doctor said: "I _let_ you win that one. And I let you win the _number of completely senseless deaths by obstinacy_ one as well." And, merciful Merlin, wasn't he proud of himself?

Harry shook his head and poked the Doctor's ribs, for no other purpose than to wipe that self-satisfied look off of his face. "I'm a hard man to keep down."

"That you are," the Doctor replied, smiling and nodding a lot, his mind light-years away from here and now. "And I'll take a rain-check on _that_ thought. Jack must have rubbed off on me-"

"Figuratively, I hope," Harry inquired, although he wasn't really worried.

If the Doctor, hypothetically, had to save Jack Harkness from drowning, he'd start by looking for the nearest ten-foot pole.

"Always…" the Doctor confirmed. Then he scrunched up his nose in this incarnation's expression of anxiety. "…although, you _did_ make me forget I was committed-"

Harry poked his ribs again, and got swatted at. "You were never committed," he argued. "Many tried and failed. You're only certified, you lunatic."

"Still!" the Doctor proclaimed mightily, with his finger in the air. Then he paused to backtrack and put his thoughts into verbalisable order. "Doctor River Song. Or Professor. Or whatever she is at this point in her timeline."

"She's convicted and escaped, most importantly," Harry filled in.

He wasn't very worried about her – she was too wily to let herself be held in any detention facility, but fortunately she was the mostly philanthropic kind of criminal, who just wanted to live in comfort and stick out her tongue at the hordes of law enforcement personnel fruitlessly chasing after her. As long as she didn't go around doing spring racial cleanings or commandeering planets, Harry just didn't care.

His only point of contention with her was the Doctor.

"She made me believe I was married to _her_ in the future," the Doctor muttered, as if he had followed Harry's line of thought.

"She is a con woman," Harry pointed out. That was what conning people was all about – making them believe something that wasn't true.

"She knows my name," the Doctor insisted, trying to explain why he had let himself be taken in by the illusion, why he had allowed himself to hope, and why it hurt so much when he found out that he had built himself another castle of air.

"I hate to disabuse you of your notion of impenetrable secrecy," Harry said, perhaps a little harshly, as they stood side by side looking down at River's – or Harmony's, as she had introduced herself almost ten thousand years ago – prone form, "but every genius kid with a Vortex Manipulator and a sonic screwdriver can find out your name."

"She created a miniature paradox machine and told herself…?" the Doctor stared, open-mouthed. He glanced at Harry, then at the central column, and clapped his hands. "Brilliant!" he exclaimed. He took two steps toward the console, pivoted on his heel and pointed at the unconscious River with the sonic screwdriver in one hand and an outstretched finger on the other. "A con artist?"

It was a reasonable assumption. In fact, it was widely known about River Song that she was a con artist, so Harry made the leap of logic and assumed that her acquaintance with Doctor was also an ongoing project of hers. "She did _con_ you into teaching her how to drive the TARDIS."

The Doctor pouted. "I must have been very young," he muttered and stalked to the console, presumably to access the databanks and find some mention of her in his older files. He detached a panel covering the console, and pulled a little screen out of the depths of the console's viscera, attached to a knot of thin multicoloured cables. He knocked on it a few times, before it buzzed, flashed to life, and filled with tiny print.

Harry Levitated River onto a hastily conjured cot off to the side, because he had nothing better to do in the meantime, and leaving her lying there in the centre of the floor was really quite uncouth.

"Going on seven hundred," the Doctor muttered, shaking his head. "Possibly a teensy bit senile." He turned around, imploring Harry with his eyes: "Why don't I remember her, then? I should remember her. She's very memorable."

"Why, indeed?" Harry shrugged. There were too many possible answers. He, most certainly, wasn't the Doctor's keeper to hold his hand and wipe his nose all the time and explain the facts of the universe to him. He, mostly, didn't even know the facts of the universe. It just wasn't interesting enough to study – not when he could kick back and watch antique records of the _Big Bang Theory_ instead.

The Doctor pointed his rude forefinger at Harry, mused for a moment, and shook his head. "No, you wouldn't. But you're hardly the _only_ mage in the universe-"

"And you're falling into the trap of thinking of a magical solution first," Harry pointed out. There were books filled with possible medical solutions, and more books with chemistry, and also some treatises about the Time Vortex as seen through the eyes of beings who couldn't think in nine dimensions. Metagravity, anyone?

"Right," the Doctor replied absently. Then Harry's answer penetrated, and his eyes lit up. "Right… Oh. Oh!"

"Quite," Harry agreed, and brought out a nail file, since it appeared that the Doctor was going to be busy with the TARDIS and his diary from a couple hundred years of personal time ago.

x

The Doctor found Harry not in the kitchen, where Harry said he was going, but in the art gallery, eating fish and chips out of folded newspaper from the sixth millennium Alfalfa Metraxis.

He ran up the rest of the spiral staircase, grabbed Harry's arm, and uncompromisingly pulled him past the row of pictures back to the console room.

"Why do people insist on dragging me?" Harry huffed, and retaliated by casting an Itching Hex on the Doctor.

He was released, while the Doctor maniacally scratched at his forearms and begged: "Stop it – stop it, Harry! I'll be good, I promise! No itching! Itching is bad-"

Harry relented and cancelled the spell. The Doctor had him figured out – little irritated him as much as the Doctor pretending to be pathetic.

They passed a conspicuously chained and padlocked door, and Harry craned his neck, trying to see what was there in _this_ version of the TARDIS. Probably not the swimming pool that had been there before. Pity. Harry had liked the swimming pool. And the skinny dipping-

"I need your help," the Doctor said, putting his arm around Harry's shoulders and directing him, much more gently than before, to the cot where River was faking unconsciousness (neither of them cared to alert her to the fact that they knew she was awake).

Harry met the Doctor's eyes and for a while they just stared at each other, neither speaking. Then the Doctor leaned in, pecked Harry's lips, and whispered into his ear: "Harry… she will meet me again. I will have needed her help…"

"You want me to Obliviate her," Harry whispered back.

River, apparently, had very good auditory perception, because she shifted and clenched her fists, in an apparent last-ditch effort to get out of the bindings.

"I do not," the Doctor refuted. "But you have to."

"Right," Harry agreed easily. He had no real qualms about Obliviating people, especially if he was doing it for the good of someone about whom he gave a damn. No 'Greater Good' for him, thank you very much, just 'little but personal good.' Yes, he had heard arguments about how the intrusion into someone's psyche was akin to rape and inherently evil, but he had yet to see anyone be traumatised by _competent_ Obliviation. Besides, he already knew he had done it. "Paradoxes are very bad."

"Very bad," the Doctor agreed, still leaning close enough for Harry to feel his exhales on his skin, as if he needed to seduce Harry into complying. Which turned out to be exactly what he intended, the moment he added: "And Obliviate me, too."

"No," Harry replied firmly, and met the Doctor's eyes – and his most pathetic pout – head on.

"It will-"

"No," Harry repeated. "And spare yourself the argument."

River had given up on the pretense of being out, and watched them through a curtain of dislodged curly hair. Incongruently, there was a slight smile on her face – or, most likely a smirk – as if she knew something they didn't. Harry didn't like that expression. It gave him the creeps.

"You know what you will have done, and you will do it," Harry told the Doctor uncompromisingly. "You don't need the crutch of oblivion."

The Doctor chuckled and released Harry from the manipulative three-quarters hug. "Always the pioneer of the hard way."

"That's me," Harry confirmed. He scowled at the fat-soaked newspaper in his hand and Vanished it before it started dripping through the floor into the storage room below. "Out of curiosity, how many times have you met her already?"

"I didn't count," the Doctor lied – probably for River's benefit.

It wasn't as if Harry was particularly interested. If there had been something he might have not wanted to know, he was glad the Doctor wasn't going to force the knowledge on him. He was considerate that way. What he _did_ want to know was: "Have you met her for her first time yet?"

"No – not that I know, anyway," the Doctor replied, fiddling with the controls on the console. The old-style screen was still on, and he had temporarily affixed it to the panel with what looked like a giant wad of chewing gum. "I have met her for her last time, except – probably not."

"Alright," Harry said tolerantly. That was such a Doctorly specific answer. "So that's two more encounters, and then you can let her know."

He heard the Doctor stop fiddling with the console. He turned. Smiled tightly. The Doctor looked worried.

"You don't have to."

"But-"

"I don't own you," Harry stated. "I wouldn't want to."

The Doctor laughed then, head thrown back and hugging his stomach, as if what Harry said was so absurd that there were no words to describe it, and the only fitting response was to treat it as a joke.

Harry pointed two fingers at the covertly observing River and thought '_Stupefy_' followed by '_Obliviate._'

The Doctor's laugh tapered off into occasional soft giggles. He crossed the room and cupped Harry's face in both hands. "You're the keeper of my hearts, Harry – both of them."

Harry was startled into a chuckle. He covered the Doctor's hands with his own and met his eyes. For a moment, he felt like everything was indescribably right with the universe, and he had found a better answer than 'forty-two' to the age-long question that beleaguered philosophers everywhere.

"Got lucky," he said. "Two for the price of one."


	3. Harry's Beginning

A/N: I must admit that I'm in a state of greater than mild disgruntlement, based on the readers' response to this fic. :-(( I just hope it's because it's bloody complicated and admittedly difficult to understand, rather than because you simply don't like it. Also, with 39 people adding the story to their favourites and 63 alerts, I would have honestly expected more than 3 reviews to the last chapter. But I'm not whining. Nuh-uh.

Thanks, reviewers!

Also, I just found out that ffnet's eaten the colons in the story, and also some semicolons, dashes and quotation marks. I'm not quite that bad at punctuation, I swear. I have no idea what to do about that, because I don't have the patience to rewrite the whole story without colons, semicolons and dashes. What the Hell?

x

Taking Advantage: Harry's Beginning

x

_1,995 Earthtime, Earth, Great Britain_

x

"What?" the Doctor blurted. "_What?_"

"What is it?" Amy demanded, shrugging off Rory's hands and stumbling across the bucking and rearing TARDIS to look at the screen.

"We can't be _now_!" the Doctor protested.

"Why? And when is now?" Amy peered over the Doctor's shoulder and stared at the event coordinates. They looked innocuous at best – less than two decades in the past for her. Earth. Britain. It was still the pre-yearly-Apocalypse era, so there shouldn't even be a large-scale catastrophe happening-

The TARDIS crash-landed.

"Ugh," Amy groaned, rolling over onto her back. The ceiling was swimming.

Rory was at her side in a flash, feeling her up. "Are you alright?"

"Peachy," Amy grumbled. "Get off – where are we, Doctor? _Doctor_?"

The door slamming shut was her only response.

"He's gone out," Rory informed her oh so usefully, going over to the console and peering at a screen. "We're in Surrey, in June, nineteen ninety-five. There's nothing blinking or beeping, so-"

"We're fine following him," Amy finished. She opened the door, spied the Doctor running down the middle of an empty suburban street, and set out in his wake.

"Amy!" Rory protested.

"After him!" Amy yelled from the outside. She didn't really doubt that Rory would do as he was told, so there was no need to waste time. Having a settled chain of command was really economical. Now, if only the Doctor would comply…

"This does… look like… an alien… invasion…" Rory panted, stumbling as he glanced away from the footpath for a moment.

He was right. They were on a street in a British suburb that was trying very hard to be as typical as possible – and failing miserably. Amy was a little awed at humanity's selective blindness, when they failed to notice the unnatural uniformity of the houses. Even the gardens were mostly identical. She sped up before they lost the Doctor in this man-sized rat-maze.

The park where the TARDIS had so insisted at parking had just disappeared from sight behind box-like houses, when they spotted the top of a church-tower. Apparently, everybody used the same architect; the tower was poking out from between the surrounding buildings, the structure recognisable only by the cross on top as one of those modern, _box-like_ churches.

There was a figure sitting on the sill of the window just below the edge of the dark roof, with jean-clad legs dangling down.

"Doctor!" Amy hollered.

The man ignored her, flinging himself through the church-door.

Amy ran past a staring elderly couple out for a walk, a harried young father fighting a screaming toddler into submission, and narrowly dodged an unfortunately positioned lamppost. She briefly checked on Rory – he escaped from the reach of a yapping poodle – and jogged on, through a low gate onto the gravel path leading up to the church.

"_Doctor_?" She came to a halt in front of the steps.

"Must you yell?" a soft voice asked from above.

Rory, tripping and huffing, crashed into Amy. With some moans and semi-vulgar mutterings, Mr and Mrs Williams sorted themselves out, and Amy craned her neck, squinting against the sun, to see who was talking to her.

The figure she had seen from distance was squatting on the windowsill, gripping onto the sides of the window-frame and leaning out. It was a boy. He wore glasses and very baggy jeans. It was difficult to tell any more details.

"Careful!" Amy yelled. "You could fall-"

"That's kind of the point," the boy replied. "I'm just worried it's not deep enough-"

Then he was grabbed from behind and pulled inside.

"At least that makes sense," Rory said, nodding.

"_How_?"

Rory shrank away from her and self-consciously pointed out the obvious: "The Doctor didn't want the kid to kill himself?"

"But how did he know?" Amy asked, looking upwards as the sounds of struggle filtered through the open window. She hoped they wouldn't encounter the parish clerk – she wasn't ready to explain that they had come to stop a boy from attempting to commit suicide by jumping off a tower that was barely taller than a two-storey house.

"Hoodlums!" an octogenarian lady raged at them, brandishing her walking stick like a weapon. "Outrage! You should be ashamed of yourselves-"

"I…" Rory turned and seemed rather stunned at facing a shrivelled little old woman. Certainly more stunned than he had been by the Daleks, last time they had met some. Which was… in another universe. Timeline. Whatever. Anyway, Rory was stammering: "I'm… uh… we're very sorry…?"

Amy tried not to roll her eyes. She succeeded insofar as she had turned to the door of the church by the time Rory yelped out a cowed "Madam…" and thus no one witnessed it. Which meant that she was free to claim she had refrained.

"Come on!" she ordered, and when Rory seemed like he was going to keep trying to apologise, she rolled her eyes again and strolled up the stairs and into the nicely air-conditioned insides of the building.

It was disappointingly plain. Sure, after she had been to different times and different planets, and had met more aliens and touched more cultures than she could remember off the top of her head, 'disappointingly plain' became a term without any real substance. She did her best to compare it to what she knew about churches – Earth churches, that was – and it still came out plain. It was… blocky, monochromatic grey, and the pews looked like they were from IKEA. She was about to survey the altar, to see if it made up for the lack of religious definition, but her attention was drawn to the Doctor.

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs that apparently led to the so-designated 'tower,' and talking to the possibly suicidal boy, who was sitting on the second to bottom stair.

"…am the Doctor," the Doctor said, affected a grin just a bit lopsided, and waved a little. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, brimming with energy and not even breathing hard after the run; on the other hand, it did seem like he had some difficulty remembering to draw air.

Amy thought that maybe she was seeing things that weren't there, or just paranoid, but it looked to her as if for once the Doctor's eyes weren't eating _everything_ around him because too much of his attention was being occupied by the boy.

Said boy pushed up his glasses with the tip of his forefinger and gave the Doctor a look that could have been, with a large dose of kindness, described as doubtful.

"You're the Doctor with the 'the' in front of the 'Doctor'? The 'the' Doctor?" he asked.

The Doctor grinned and, satisfied, nodded to himself. "Very 'the,' yes. The only 'the,' in fact."

"It's not easy living with the definite article in front of your name, is it?" the boy asked, and seemed to struggle not to sigh. "I am _the_ Harry Potter." He offered his hand.

Amy wondered if this boy was the alien. Or, rather, one of the aliens. It would have made sense – the suburbia was extraordinarily ordinary, so it would make sense for the aliens to mask themselves as ordinary English people. Once again, they seemed to fail, though. That was, if 'Harry Potter' was an alien. Because if he was, he was too thin and his hair too messy, and his clothes only supported the idea that he was homeless…

And Amy had the distinct impression that her thoughts were unusually rambling. Maybe it would be good for her to not listen to the Doctor that much. She seemed to be catching his vices.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Harry Potter," the Doctor said, grabbed Harry's hand and quickly shook it. He let go as soon as he could.

Amy took that as support for her alien theory.

"I'm withholding judgment, Doctor," Harry replied. He was properly distrusting, as a teenager should be (Amy guessed him to be about fourteen), but he didn't ask the Doctor for a name. Rather, he asked: "Were you bullied a lot as a child?"

The Doctor didn't appear to be surprised by the sudden change of topic – not even by the topic itself. He was still doing that thing when all his attention was directed solely at Harry to the exclusion of everything else, which was probably why he had yet to realise that Amy was standing two steps from the church-door and watching the entire exchange, and that Rory was coming up behind her now, scowling and huffing.

He wiggled his fingers and compulsively raked them through his hair. "Not a lot, no…" he replied, inclined his head and added: "a bit, perhaps."

Rory opened his mouth to speak, and Amy shushed him. She wanted to see what was going on, and how it would end. This was something new – something different.

The Doctor often became fascinated with someone they met, even cared for them sometimes, but usually that happened after they saved each other's life or the world or at least the township. Rory must have been closer than he thought with his suggestion that the Doctor had shot out of the TARDIS like a bat out of Hell because of this boy. The boy didn't seem to know the Doctor, but Amy had time-travelled, and she had met River, and she had gained a fairly good idea about how a past meeting wasn't necessarily a mutual experience.

Well, whether or not 'Harry' was an alien, it seemed that he wasn't a threat. Amy, proud of her calm and logical deduction, let Rory take her hand and confidently moved to join the Doctor and his latest find.

"I see," Harry was saying as they approached. "I knew a boy who had picked a new name for himself because he had caught a lot of flak at school for his old one. He then went on to try and conquer the world by means of genocide and terror." He glanced past the Doctor at Amy and Rory, reflexively shrunk closer to the wall, and gave the Doctor a nervous look. "You're not up for world domination, are you?"

"Nope," the Doctor replied, light-hearted (still bouncing), but also earnest, as if there was a chance that Harry might have thought it was a real possibility. "Definitely not my thing, world domination. Too much sitting on my butt. Not enough running."

Harry gave the Doctor a searching look. Sun glinted off of his spectacles, and he narrowed his eyes. "Okay," he said eventually, quietly enough that Amy more read the word from his lips than heard it.

"You're a very strange boy," she said, measuring him again. She was now standing close enough to notice details – like that his trainers were in a cry-worthy state, his toes poking out, or that there was a faded picture of a Formula One car on his t-shirt – and was ready to declare him authentic.

The Doctor practically jumped, as if he really hadn't been aware of Amy's presence.

Harry turned to her, and said, in a calm, casual tone: "And you're a rather rude lady, but you don't see me pointing it out."

Amy opened her mouth to reply. Then she realised that it hadn't been a question. She narrowed her eyes. "You just d-"

"Harry," the Doctor cut in, "this is Amy. Amy, Harry."

"Hi," Harry said dispassionately, and looked over Amy's shoulder.

"I'm Rory," Rory said, noticing that he was noticed.

"Harry," the boy replied, as if it hadn't already been heard and noted by everybody present. "_The_ Boy Who Lived, and all that rot."

"It's a good thing," Rory remarked.

The boy snorted.

Rory shifted under the weight of three stares with varying levels of judgment. "I guess," he added. "Killing yourself is not the solution. Or so they say. I – wouldn't really know."

There was a while of silence, disturbed only by distant voices drifting in from outside and the never-ending squeaking of the Doctor's shoes, before Harry gave Amy's husband a half-smile that, rather than light up his face, emphasised his melancholia. "Thanks, Rory."

Amy was momentarily struck speechless. This teenage boy's expression resembled one of the Doctor's expressions – one that she didn't recall ever seeing elsewhere. It was a bit like the boy was looking at Rory from great distance, seeing him against his background, and realising how much he exceeded all expectations. Amy doubted even she looked at Rory like that, and she _loved_ him. Up until today she had thought it was a Time Lord thing.

"He is brilliant, isn't he?" the Doctor asked excitedly, drawing attention back to himself, like a child who didn't like that the adults were talking over his head. Interestingly, his fists were tightly clenched. "You're all brilliant, and you don't ever notice it! Brilliant humans populating this wonderful blue planet and they text each other and… and _blog_… until they forget that there are other brilliant humans surrounding them! Oh, you're all so annoyingly blind! But brilliant!"

Amy scowled and was about to say something caustic, but for once others were quicker.

Harry said: "You forgot self-centered. Patronising. Occasionally homicidal."

Rory, at the same time, suggested: "We should probably take this discussion out of the church."

"Mortal," Harry continued muttering, but he didn't object much when Amy offered him a hand to pull him up from the stair, even though he let go as rapidly as the Doctor had before – almost as if the touch was hurting him (which, if he _was_ an alien, was entirely possible).

They walked out into the overcast but so far dry afternoon. Dogs barked, cats slunk through the spaces between fence bars, birds chirped in trees, cars sped past, and people walked up and down the streets. The place was… normal.

Except that all the houses looked exactly the same. That, and the Doctor was interested in it. Dead giveaway.

"I'm hungry," Rory announced, looking from Harry who was walking on his right side and slightly behind him to the Doctor, who made sure to stay a little in the front, half a step to Amy's left. "Is anyone else hungry?" he asked hopefully.

"I have to go," Harry said. "Was nice meeting you, but-"

"Promise me you won't hurt yourself," the Doctor demanded, quite uncompromisingly for all that he seemed to be hiding from the boy behind the wall of Amy and her husband.

"I don't think that's any of your business," Harry said resolutely. He wasn't so much angry at the Doctor butting in, as apathetic. "I have to g-"

"More freaks, Potter?" a boy called out.

Amy spun – she was aware of the rest of the company doing the same – and saw a… a… to put it with obviously undeserved politeness, a _young man_, somewhat older than Harry in appearance, and about ten times bigger than Harry in girth. And whereas Harry might have been too thin to be really healthy, it really wasn't the reason for the ratio. This… _boy_, was fat, blond and supported by two goons of roughly the same intelligence quotient and considerably lower mass.

Harry, with one arm protectively wrapped around himself (Amy would have bet he didn't know he was doing it) looked at the blond leader of the vagabonds, and said: "Yes, Dudley."

"_No_," the Doctor chimed in. He resolutely strode past Amy and Rory, grabbed Harry's elbow and _made_ him look up. "No, you don't do this, Harry Potter! You may be tired, but you aren't giving up! You never give up-"

"Wait till I tell Dad!" the fat blond boy crowed, but no one was really paying any attention. Amy was torn; half of her was glad that the obvious tension between the Doctor and Harry had finally snapped, the other half dreaded the confrontation. It was becoming clearer with every passing minute that Harry wasn't a threat to the Earth, and that he was important to the Doctor – would be important to the Doctor in his own future, and therefore would have to have a future, and therefore it was vital that he wouldn't harm himself unduly before reaching said future.

Compared to that, a bully didn't matter much.

"…think you know about me!" Harry was snarling at the Doctor, ineffectually trying to rip his arm out of the Doctor's hold. "I don't owe you anything! I don't owe anyone anything!"

"That's not strictly true," the Doctor objected, "but I agree with you that no one has the right to ask you to care for them or sacrifice yourself for them. And I'm not talking about that, Harry Potter. I'm saying – look at Rory!"

Harry, without thinking about it, looked at Rory. As a matter of fact, so did Amy.

"I don't know what you want from me," Harry said. "Let go of me, or I'll shout. Something vulgar. And then I'll shout 'fire' and-"

"Stop ignoring me, freak!" the blond vagabond yelled. And stomped his foot.

"Go home, Dudley," Harry said disinterestedly, and again tried to get away from the Doctor.

"I'll say you did you-know-what and Dad will lock you up for a week! No food!" the blond bellowed.

Amy gulped at the insinuation, and the Doctor went from sad and indignant to sadder and more indignant. Rory paled and took a step toward the group of teenage thugs. They took a step backwards. Obviously, they had more bravado than actual courage, but Amy didn't want to get into a fight with them. They did enough of that with invading aliens.

"I'll call the police," Rory said. "I'll tell them your parents are hurting my friend. You will have a visit from social services. Do you want that?"

Amy realised that this time Rory was the quickest on the uptake. He had figured out that Harry was, for whatever reason, living with the fatso's family. She sincerely hoped it was because Harry's parents wanted a week off for themselves and left him with distant relatives, but judging from the half-hearted suicide attempt, the cynicism, and the expression Harry was wearing at the moment, it was a fool's hope.

"You're such a loser, Potter," the rat-faced individual flanking fatso intoned, but apparently he had lost interest in the exchange – or, alternatively, had enough brain cells to realise that a call to the police, for whatever reason, could land him in trouble.

The blond, unfortunately, didn't have that much grey matter. "I heard you at night, freak, crying out for your _boyfriend_."

The third boy, distinctive by unlaced trainers, jeans that fell so low on his buttocks that they showed way too much of his underwear, and protruding supraciliary arches, bit out: "Faggot!"

Amy cocked her fist and was about to move over there and punch him in the face so hard that they would have to scrape him off of the pavement – Rory stopped her, the big, lanky, lovable mother hen.

Harry, notably, stopped the Doctor from executing some evolutionarily more advanced, but essentially equivalent, form of retribution.

Cowed by the threat of direct confrontation with superior numbers, the three hooligans left, muttering curses and casting menacing looks at Harry over their shoulders.

"What an utterly disagreeable individual," the Doctor pointed out, for once not elated with the brilliance of the human race.

Harry, who had so far handled the whole situation with unhealthy stoicism, shrugged. "I got used to it. Besides, it's not all his fault. His parents… I'd be hard-pressed to compare the disagreeability of my relatives."

The Doctor raised his hand and almost touched Harry, but caught himself, or changed his mind, and instead raked his fingers through his hair. He scuffed his shoes on the pavement and managed to look downright forlorn.

Amy, in deference to the Doctor's wish to not let Harry run off, borrowed Rory's previous train of thought and asked: "Let us treat you to early dinner?"

Harry hesitated, but eventually nodded. "Might as well."

Amy didn't like to think it, but the way Harry looked down the street the three bullies had gone, it seemed that fatso's threat was actually viable. And that was… criminal.

Harry reluctantly led them to an eatery which, fortuitously, was not too far from the TARDIS. The place was alright and except Amy, Rory, the Doctor and their grudging young companion, there was only one other group of customers – a family with children.

Amy watched them for any signs of sprouting tentacles or declaring that they were going to exterminate someone, but it seemed that they truly were merely four obese providers of mindless chatter. While she was thus occupied with covert intelligence gathering and conspiracy theories, the three men claimed a square table with a mildly stained off-white plastic tablecloth (very eighties) and the Doctor snatched up the salt-shaker to play with it. Also, the Doctor claimed the seat furthermost from Harry's – opposite him – and prevented Amy from sitting next to her husband, which was a very underhanded and cowardly thing to do.

"Come along, Pond!" the Doctor called out, pointing at the empty chair.

Amy scowled. "But shouldn't we talk to-"

"There's no invasion," the Doctor said, as if he could read her mind.

Amy braced herself for more chatter, but it wasn't coming. The Doctor poured a bit of salt into his palm and started licking it off, never mind what he had touched since he had last washed that hand. Maybe Time Lords were naturally immune to all Earth bacteria or something, but Amy rather thought this was the Doctor being childish and recalcitrant and, quite likely, a liar.

"What?" she protested. "But-"

"You underestimate just how boring people can be. Which is a pity, because – humans! Brilliant. Except when they aren't," he added sadly, looking at the door behind which – in the abstract sense – Harry might have suffered at the hands of his relatives.

"Fine," she concluded, and plopped into the chair that was left for her, while Harry seemed to be trying to move as far away from her _and_ Rory as he could without unseating himself. "I want pancakes. Do they even have pancakes in this allegedly-not-alien town?"

"Alien?" Harry repeated skeptically.

"Never mind that, Harry," the Doctor replied, eyes glued to the salt-shaker he was passing from hand to hand at a progressively higher speed. It was going to break soon enough, and the Williams' would have to pay for it, but that was par for the course. "That would be the start of a long philosophical, metaphysical and possibly religious debate, and while we might have the time for it, I'm afraid you wouldn't understand enough of it for it to be interesting. Then you'd get bored, and I'd have to catch you again when you try to run out-"

"Pancakes, you said?" Rory asked Amy when the Doctor's rant in itself became boringly redundant.

"Me too," Harry raised his hand, almost like in school. "If the invitation still stands, that is. I'm broke."

Rory stood and went to find a waitress and order pancakes for all of them. The Doctor stopped chattering when he realised that no one was listening, and continued playing with the shaker, this time watching the refraction of light in the glass.

The silence quickly became quite oppressive, and Amy started tapping her foot. Then she rapped her fingers against the tabletop. She hummed for a bit.

Harry was sitting still, a bit curled up on himself, as if he was hiding inside a shell. He turned completely inwards. Amy didn't like what she saw – she didn't want to think about the possibility that he was really being abused by his relatives. Sure, he looked like a bum, at a glance, and he was a bit on the antagonistic side, but he had also shown himself to be basically a polite, troubled boy.

"I don't want to doubt you," she said once the silence became too much, "but that wouldn't have been a very effective way of killing yourself."

The Doctor actually _glared_ at her.

Amy shivered.

Harry, however, waved it off with a sigh. "I figured. That's why I didn't jump – breaking bones hurts. Still, the church is the tallest structure in Whinging, and _they_ don't let me out of town."

"Who are 'they'?" Amy asked, as Rory sat down opposite her and tuned in to the conversation.

Harry leant closer to her and spoke quietly. "You know those people they always show on news claiming that they've seen aliens?"

"Yea," Amy replied, moving a little closer. If the kid was really imprisoned by non-terrestrials, she wanted him to feel that he could trust her – that she wouldn't dismiss his words because they sounded improbable. The Doctor said that there were no aliens, but the Doctor had been wrong before. And he lied. Amy didn't do blind trust.

"You know how they say that they were abducted and cloned…" Harry lowered his voice further, whispering: "…how the _green_ men held them in their spaceships, and there were these four rotating balls above their head…" He made a circular gesture with his hands to illustrate the motion.

"Yea…" Amy gasped. Now they were getting somewhere.

"And the green light, it made them dizzy-"

"Yea…" Amy nodded.

"Well," Harry sat up straight. "It's got nothing to do with that."

There was a beat of silence, and then the Doctor burst into loud, raucous laughter. "It _is_ you!" he exclaimed. "Harry Potter, the one and only! Baffling the scientists and the gullible all over the universe-"

"I'm _not_ gullible!" Amy protested.

Rory, thinking she couldn't see, patted Harry's shoulder in silent congratulations.

Harry flinched away from the touch – went as far as to vacate the chair to get out of Rory's arms' reach. The Doctor came down from his high and scowled at Rory's hands.

"You," Harry said, pointing at the Doctor. "You're not human, are you? No offense intended."

The Doctor smiled and shook his head. "I'm not."

Harry nodded. "Thought so. You've got that strange vibe. Not a veela, though… We haven't studied anthropomorphic beings yet, so I can't tell… sorry. It's not very polite, is it?" He cringed. "Don't eat me, please."

Amy laughed at the suggestion; Rory, too, chuckled, nudging the empty chair closer to the boy in a silent bid for him to sit down again.

"I won't," the Doctor promised solemnly, and then ruined the earnest impression by adding: "Unless you change your mind and ask."

"You're taking advantage of my naivety," Harry said reproachfully.

The Doctor grinned, unrepentant. "You'll have revenge. In spades."

Harry blinked at him. He sat down, glancing at Rory in a silent warning to not touch him again, rested his elbows on the table and bit his lower lip. Amy tried to ask how the Doctor knew Harry, but the Doctor clamped a hand over her mouth to keep her silent. Rory looked from one of them to the other, got the hint, and mimed zipping up his lips.

Perhaps a minute later, Harry released his now vividly red lower lip from between his teeth and gave the Doctor a very sharp look. "You're either a Seer or a time-traveller or a good actor."

"He's a lousy actor," Rory spoke with way too much honesty. "Good liar, though."

The Doctor ignored him, content with keeping Amy silent. "Have you ever time-travelled?"

Harry, with zero credibility, replied: "I don't know what you're talking about."

Amy gaped. She had been half-certain that Harry wasn't an alien, and now he claimed to have had time-travelled? Well, claimed to not have, but since he was lying, it came down to the same thing.

"You _have_," the Doctor replied. "I thought you would have by now. And I'm not going to tell the Ministry, so no worries."

"And I should take your word on it?" Harry said doubtfully. "I'm not quite _that_ naïve, sir. I'm not admitting to anything."

He had time-travelled _illicitly_? Or – _illegally_? At that age? And was that even his real age? What Ministry?

"Three hours," the Doctor said, finally letting go of Amy, who made a bit of a theatre of taking huge, gasping breaths. He was unimpressed – he had enough practice shutting Amy up _manually_ to know exactly how to grip to keep her respiration unimpeded.

Harry, meanwhile, utterly failed to hide his shock. "Tell me more," he demanded. "Tell me enough for me to believe that you are a part of my future. That… that I _have_ a future."

If Amy had not glanced at the Doctor right then, she probably would have missed it. It was as if someone had lit up a light inside his head and it shone out through his eyes – there was a look there that contained memories, not only facts, but perceptions, _feelings_. It was a look that belonged onto the face of someone who had lived for more than nine centuries. It was desperately heavy.

And she now knew enough to smugly say: "He'll survive it."

"Survive what?" Harry snapped. "What do you think you know about me?"

"Don't know jack-squat about you, kid," Amy said, "but I've learnt a bit about this one." She pointed her thumb at the Doctor.

"An unfortunate choice of words," the Doctor told Amy, scrunching his nose. He turned to Harry. "You've finished your fourth year, right?"

The waitress brought them plates covered with chocolate and whipped topping and set them down onto the table, together with four sets of cutlery. It would have been quite impressive actually – a show of balance and skill – had anyone been watching her. The Doctor was once again excluding the world to concentrate of Harry, Harry was doing his best figuring out what the Hell was happening to him, and Rory and Amy were busy watching the match.

Harry nodded. "Not exactly privileged information."

The waitress recited the obligatory 'if you would like anything else' formula and took her leave.

"When Pettigrew tied you to the headstone, you weren't really scared," the Doctor said cryptically.

Harry paled.

"You wanted to kill him – you wished you had not spared him before – but in the end you clung to your life and for the first time ever you really, truly felt the desire to inflict death."

Harry kept his composure incredibly for such a young boy, Amy thought. If what the Doctor was saying was the truth – and going by Harry's expression it was actually watered down due to the listening ears – then Harry had gone through some bloody scary things and three friendly if odd strangers couldn't frighten him.

"I don't think I'll ever trust anyone enough to tell them this," Harry muttered.

The Doctor replied: "With time, it won't be so important anymore – nor so terrifying."

"I'll survive?" the boy asked, so full of hope, turning to Amy for confirmation.

She was just realising that in being coy she had unwittingly made a promise she couldn't keep.

"The future is flux," the Doctor replied, drawing Harry's attention back to himself. "But if you fight for it hard enough, you will."

"And is there something waiting for me worth fighting for?" Harry demanded. Muted desperation that was the reason they had found him contemplating suicide mixed with yearning sounded in his voice. He was hanging onto the Doctor's words as if they were a beacon.

The Doctor's eyes flashed. There were memories again – too many memories for a human to comprehend, enough of them to create something independent of consciousness, something alive on a certain level. It was living inside the Doctor's head, Amy imagined, and Harry was the one who could bring it out, later on in Harry's timeline, because this boy had yet a lot of growing to do before he could be that _someone_ for the Doctor.

"I meant it," Amy said quietly, leaning in to the Doctor's ear so that Harry wouldn't hear. "He's what? Fourteen? Fifteen? He'll survive a kiss."

The Doctor blinked. "Oh! Now it makes sense." He stood and extended his hand to Harry. "Not here."

Harry looked like he wasn't going to take that hand, but the Doctor grabbed him and dragged him outside, leaving Amy and Rory to eat the lunch and pay for it, but Amy – just this once – didn't object.

"He's really…" Rory said, looking at the Doctor and the ragged boy he was pulling along through the tall windows of the eatery, "…the Doctor's…"

"Lover?" Amy asked. "Boyfriend? Special someone?" She smirked. "Sure looked like it, didn't it?"

x

The Doctor – Harry thought the lack of name was actually the first and probably only warning for people that the man wasn't telling them the truth and wasn't likely to ever begin – pulled him down Magnolia Crescent and past the bright green shrubberies styled into animal shapes, to the park.

There was a blue police box at the corner that had never been there before. It stood out in the familiar surroundings, and Harry noticed the Doctor looking at it – with no surprise whatsoever – so he guessed that there was a connection. These strangers didn't exactly scare him, but they were disconcerting enough, and what they were telling him didn't make sense. That red-haired young woman believed in aliens. Her husband didn't think this was strange at all – in fact, he looked like he believed everything Harry was telling her as well.

Time-travel had garnered no reaction from them. And now this non-human – whose hand felt _very_ human on Harry's forearm – was taking him away from civilisation, allegedly to prove to him that they were acquainted in the future.

"You know that people are trying to kill me?" Harry asked conversationally.

"Hm – sure," the Doctor replied absently. "It's not a secret either. Everyone knows that. Not a thing I could tell you to convince you to believe me-"

"Definitely not human," Harry muttered. Or at least not sane. "How can I be sure you aren't in league with them?"

"I am in an entirely different league!" the Doctor exclaimed, a mite offended. "Plus, I don't condone terrorism!"

"And you're obviously not afraid of the terrorists either," Harry deadpanned.

The Doctor grinned at him. "Nope. And tell you what – the terrorists are lying low until they get the green light… uh, metaphorically – I don't mean the curse. Anyway, don't look at me like that, I know these things because I've been in the future and there it's history, not because I've got any inside information. Time-travel. You should know what it's like."

"Knowing what's going to happen? Confusing," Harry replied, and then mentally kicked himself for admitting as much. It was difficult to keep his own thoughts in order when the man started prattling like that.

"Hard to keep straight in your head when you do it often enough," the Doctor agreed. "In fact, it's hard to keep even wibbly-wobbly in your head…" He pointed to the swings. "There?"

"How did you-" Harry paused and shook his head. "Stupid question."

"Not stupid," the Doctor protested, dragging Harry toward the swings, "just one with a really obvious answer. Like, why is it light during the day? Or why doesn't the apple fall far from the tree? Or why can't you breathe underwater? Or-"

"I get the point," Harry cut in, involuntarily smiling. "So, in your past – my future – you asked me, or will ask me, what was my favourite spot in this town?"

"Seems like it," the Doctor replied, smiling back. He had a way of smiling that created horizontal lines on his forehead and mostly failed to touch his eyes. "Or you'll have told me. Now you know you should, so I can impress you today."

Harry tilted his head to the side and let himself be nudged onto the swing – the only one that had withstood Dudley's gang's rampage. "Do I tell you to come here today to keep me from – you know? Trying to kill myself?"

The Doctor shook his head, giving Harry a spine-tinglingly focused stare. "No," he said slowly. "You don't. But you know you won't, so maybe that's why. The TARDIS told me – don't ask about the TARDIS, I have already explained it and you won't have known then."

Harry nodded. "I'm beginning to get this. And you're consistent. I almost believe you."

"Thank you." The Doctor grinned. "No one's ever told me I was consistent before."

His grin, however serious his eyes were being, was contagious.

Harry squared his shoulders with determination. "Alright. Reason for fighting. Now."

"Don't shout," the Doctor warned. "Don't hit me. Don't panic."

"Why?" Harry asked.

He was going to tack on an obligatory 'what are you going to do?' but the Doctor was quicker in replying: "Because Amy would laugh at me. Heck, even Rory would laugh at me, and that's just sad."

Harry chuckled. "Okay."

The Doctor stepped closer to the swing, until his knees touched Harry's. He was kind of towering – Harry had to crane his neck to look him in the eye – but not intimidating. Uncertain. Worried. The lines on his forehead were deeper now than they were when he was amused.

"How can a reason to fight be bad?" Harry inquired.

The Doctor gulped. "This may be easier if you close your eyes?"

"No," Harry said, shaking his head.

The Doctor gulped again and nodded. The he took a deep breath, leant down, and pressed his lips to Harry's.

Harry reared backwards and almost fell off the swing.

The Doctor straightened and sighed – in relief.

Harry blinked. "That's it?" He gripped the chains in his hands and pulled himself straight. "That's your great motivation for me to go out there and risk getting caught and tortured? Not mentioning it's molestation, that's not worth a broken knu-"

Harry couldn't say anything more, because there were hands clamped to the sides of his head and a curious wet sensation that was totally unlike anything he had ever been subjected to. It was shocking, and he tried to get away, but the hands held him fast, and after a moment – once he realised what was going on – his self-preservation instinct kicked in, and he remained where he was.

He relaxed a little. Closed his eyes. The metal of the chains felt warm under his palms, so he moved them to colder spots. The Doctor's hands gentled – not keeping him in place anymore, but caressing. Harry had never felt anything like it before, either, but this was nice. Like the Doctor cared.

Taking advantage of his naivety – that was what the Doctor was doing. But Harry was gone past the point of struggling. He opened his mouth wider, curious, tentatively welcoming, and the wet, slick sensation of the kiss grew pleasurable, indecent and wrong and so very desirable. No wonder the older boys and girls spent so much time snogging. This was wonderful. Strange, but wonderful.

The Doctor gradually withdrew; eventually, he pressed another close-mouthed kiss to Harry's lips and let go.

"_That's_ it?" Harry protested, opening his eyes. He was breathless, and the objection sounded feeble to his own ears.

"That's a promise," the Doctor replied wistfully, meeting Harry's eyes.

"How do I know-"

"I _promise_," the Doctor cut in. "It will take time, and you'll have to do some convincing, but I believe that anything you want, Harry James Potter, you can achieve. Be magnificent."

x

"…there are Laws," the Doctor was saying as Harry held the glass door open for him, "and you can't go back to cross your own timeline. Bad things happen. Especially bad things happen when you let slip something you didn't know and shouldn't have found out before you will have found it out, and then paradoxes happen and all four dimensions plus sometimes a few more go boom-"

"You're not telling me anything," Harry deadpanned, and gave Amy a half-hearted smile as he came over to the table and flopped down into the chair that had originally been Amy's, because Amy had moved closer to Rory when they had been left on their own.

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, you're _clever_." He poked the swirling brown and white mass on his plate that remained of the chocolate and whipped topping with his fork. "I need so many, many words to say what you can put into such a short, concise sentence!"

Bull, Amy thought.

"And you solve that by talking not to me, but _at_ me?" Harry inquired. He didn't seem to mind the state of his pancakes as he started wolfing them down.

Amy didn't like how hungry he seemed, and how the artificial light above Rory's head emphasised the circles under his eyes now that he was sitting directly opposite it.

"I like talking," the Doctor said, and gave up on pouting so he could lick chocolate off of his fingers. "Talking is you making sound, and you know you're alive when you make sound! Well, mostly you're alive if you're making sound. Sound is good. _Sono ergo sum_! And communication – communication is important! You can have community with communication, and communion, and computers with transspatiotemporal transmissions to save lives-"

"Are you giving me hints?" Harry asked suspiciously.

The Doctor stuffed his mouth with pancake and essentially avoided answering.

"Look," Harry said, swallowed the chewed food in his mouth and continued, "I would want to know that we win, if we win. But if we lose? And if I know we win and get overconfident and we _don't_ win because of that…"

"That's…" Rory mused, "…very wise, I suppose. But – if the Doctor knows you… isn't it inevitable?"

Harry shrugged. "Is it like a prophecy? Because if it is, it's better if you don't hear it in the first place. Prophecies tend to be self-fulfilling."

The Doctor frowned. "No, no, no! That's wrong! All wrong! You've just finished your fourth year! You shouldn't know anything about a prophecy-"

"We learned about them in Divination," Harry replied.

"Divination?" Amy was baffled. "Seriously? That's a bit… kooky."

It was Harry's turn to be baffled. "You're fine with aliens and time-travel, but divination's 'kooky'?" He shook his head.

"It's like foreknowledge," Rory suggested. "Or that theory that you know everything you'll ever learn, and by learning you're just accessing the knowledge."

Amy blinked at him. The Doctor grinned. Harry shook his head again.

"And now you've gone and given me another hint," Harry said nervously. He licked a bit of chocolate off his lower lip and then bit it. "Time-travel, communication across time, aliens, my… uh, well… _preference_… and prophecies? And you're not even human. And I thought I was confused before you turned up."

"Do you want to hurt yourself still?" the Doctor asked, meeting Harry's eyes to gauge the truthfulness of his answer.

"I didn't want to hurt myself in the first place," Harry objected. "I considered if dying wouldn't be the better option, but it wouldn't. It would just be easier. And… yeah. Chocolate. Lifts your mood."

"You should eat more chocolate then," Amy suggested.

"When I can get my hands on it," Harry replied evasively.

There was a cloud of grim knowledge above the table. They all were certain now that Harry lived with his relatives permanently, and that those relatives either abused him, or toed the line. That begged the question of where were Harry's parents, but Amy kind of remembered living with her Aunt because her parents weren't there, and it was better not to ask.

She could see in Rory's face how much he wanted to do _anything_ to help Harry out, but he glanced at the Doctor and received a head-shake in response, and that was it. Fixed points in history.

Amy sometimes hated causality, but she could sort-of understand why it worked the way it worked _when_ it worked, and she so didn't want to mess with it. It had been too damn scary when the universe ended last time – in fifteen years for Harry.

"Finished?" she asked instead, feeling subdued.

Harry set down his cutlery and nodded. The Doctor didn't protest, and Rory quietly, without needing any verbal invitation, settled the bill.

They exited through the glass door – once again held for all of them by Harry, and the action now seemed less polite and more _subservient_ – and the Doctor chose the direction in which they set out. They rounded a corner, and Amy could see the TARDIS, standing sentinel on the edge of a park, with a vandalised playground a few dozen yards behind it.

The Doctor stood at the next crossroads and turned to Harry, who was again positioned as far from the Doctor as possible, but this time Amy believed that it happened that way because the Doctor was being honourable and didn't want to take advantage of someone sixty times younger than he was. It was a little extreme of him, but at least it kind of made sense.

Also, he might have been worried that by coming closer and touching Harry, he could do the equivalent of a flap of a butterfly's wings and change his own future. After all, it would have been a pretty big coincidence that these two men met – would meet – _meet_ – one day. The tiniest difference and – _bam_! Timelines messed up.

"You're leaving," Harry said.

"Yes," the Doctor replied.

Harry didn't seem to know how he was supposed to react – or how he was supposed to feel about it. Nonetheless, his poise through the last hour was nothing short of impressive. "Okay," he said shortly. "I'll see you later. Or earlier. Whenever."

"You will," the Doctor promised, and grinned. "And, Harry, you know how the saying goes? It-"

"It gets worse before it gets better?" Harry supplied forlornly. "I know, Doctor. If he kills me, I'll come back and haunt you."

The Doctor nodded.

"Bye," Harry said, including all three of them in the greeting. He turned on his heel and went back the way they had come, toward the eatery, and then – probably – down the same street the fat blond boy had gone with his two 'friends.'

He looked back once – just before he moved out of sight – and waved.

Amy waved back. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Rory raising his hand as well.

"So?" she asked once Harry was gone and the three of them went back to the TARDIS.

"You were right," the Doctor admitted. "He survived it." With a click of his fingers, he opened the TARDIS door for them.

"I knew it!" Amy grinned smugly. She leaned into Rory and he automatically put his arm around her. She couldn't imagine what she would do without him. She _absolutely_ couldn't imagine ever leaving him behind. "Are we leaving already?"

"We saved the world. We're done here," the Doctor pointed out.

"You don't want to stay? I mean… spend some time with Harry?"

"Amy…" Rory squeezed her a little more tightly. "The kid's fourteen."

"And?"

Rory kissed the side of her neck and spoke into her hair: "I met the nine-year-old Amy Pond. I… had nothing to say to her."

"Oh." Amy didn't have any comparable experience – and didn't particularly want one. Some days it was difficult enough to find words to say to her Rory. If he was a kid, gangly, pimply, and not tall and warm and affectionate enough for the million-pounds-worth hugs, she wouldn't know what to do with him.

The Doctor had meanwhile moved to the console, and was staring at the controls with intensity that was a bit out of the ordinary. Usually he let the TARDIS have a say in where they would end, but this time it appeared that he had a specific destination in mind.

"Where to now, Doctor?" Amy asked, ducking out of Rory's hold and sauntering over to peek at the screens.

"I think," the Doctor replied with a little smirk, "you might like to meet Harry as I know him."

Amy snorted. "You mean you would like to see him."

Unabashedly, the Doctor shrugged. "That too."

"I'm all for," Amy agreed.

"Sure," Rory seconded.

With its typical handbrake-on sound, the TARDIS took off.

x

_356,119 Earthtime, Car'Antares_

x

They walked out of the TARDIS – into someone's living room. It was a spacious circular chamber bathed in gold and violet light from the sky filtered through a transparent ceiling. There were some hodge-podge pieces of technology from various ages and planets; a prominent part was devoted to a massive Earthian entertainment system.

On the wall right opposite them hung a painting in old Earth style. It depicted two men: the Doctor, in his current bow-tied appearance, and a boy in a traditional robe that was almost certainly Harry a few years after they had just met him. The men in the picture waved.

Amy considered it for a while, and then decided that a moving picture was hardly worth getting excited over.

"You could have knocked, you know," a teasing voice said from one of the door-arches. Harry walked into the room, looking just like he did in the picture: not a day over eighteen, thin, messy-haired, wearing wire-framed glasses and a light green robe that might have looked, just a bit, like a dress.

The Doctor nudged both Williams' forward and closed the TARDIS door.

"Rory!" Harry exclaimed happily. Then he let his eyes slide to Rory's wife and added: "…and Amy."

"Why the lack of enthusiasm?" Amy growled, hand on her hip.

The Doctor leaned in from behind and said, straight into her ear: "Because it gets to you."

While Rory tried to muffle his chuckles and Amy was busy being indignant, Harry crossed the room to the Doctor, looped his arms around his neck and gave him a short but scandalously thorough kiss. "Hmm… Amy and Rory, pancakes and chocolate – you're coming straight from nineteen ninety-five!"

They remained standing close for a prolonged moment, with only the tips of their noses touching, and then they, both at once, grinned.

"When did you put up that monstrosity?" the Doctor demanded, pointing his pointy finger at the portrait.

"About a month ago." Harry let go of the Doctor and walked over to a console, where he typed in a code that muted the light coming through the ceiling by darkening the glass (or whatever the material was). "You will argue most vociferously, but you know I know how to get you to fold."

"Where are we?" Amy asked, before they witnessed a teasing, intellectual, Time Lord-style domestic. She still wasn't convinced that Harry was human. In fact, she was now very convinced that _if_ Harry was a human, there was something very, very weird going on here, and 'very, very weird' by her standards was usually 'impossible' in other people's reckoning.

"I live on Car'Antares in the three hundred and fifty-seventh millennium," Harry informed them. "I love it. It's my home away from home." He stretched out his arms to the sides and spun in a circle, showing off the den he had created for himself.

The room was a cross between an IT-department, a recording studio and a VIP lounge in an upscale club. Amy had never even dreamed of having that kind of money.

Not that she was jealous. Some people – like the Doctor – were just _beyond_ jealousy.

"Well," Harry mused aloud, "I wanted to move to the beach, but he convinced me that I shouldn't." He pointed at the Doctor. "It's not like either of us is limited by time or space, anyway. I could spend all day, any day, on any beach I can think of."

"Do you have your own TARDIS?" Rory asked. He had somehow, without Amy noticing, relocated next to the sound system, and was presently pretending that he wasn't drooling over it.

Harry shook his head. "Nothing as… complicated."

Amy recognised the expression on his face. He wasn't going to say anything more. It was rather like the 'spoilers' that River had coined than like the Doctor's evasions, but it definitely implied trade secrets that wouldn't be revealed to anyone anytime soon.

"Have a seat," Harry invited them, gesturing toward a couple of settees, shaking his head at the Doctor who had already made himself comfortable. "I'll get you something to drink."

"Who is he really, Doctor?" Amy asked after Harry vanished into what she assumed were the depths of the house. Or flat. Whatever this place was.

The Doctor took his sweet time answering. Amy and Rory settled opposite him, pressed to each other, with Amy resting her cheek on Rory's very comfortable shoulder, before he said: "Possibly the most powerful man in the universe." He met her eyes and grinned. "Doesn't look it, does he?"

"I've never been very fashion-conscious," Harry admitted mock-ruefully. He came in through the nearest arch, carrying a tray with two mixed drinks decorated with pieces of unidentifiable fruit and tiny umbrellas.

Amy and Rory took them. Amy sniffed it first, then took a sip. It was sweet, but not too much. Fruity. Refreshing.

"It's my one weakness," Harry's sounded – again from the arch, and Amy's eyes widened as she looked from the boy who was standing right in front of her to the one who appeared, carrying a tray with three drinks.

"I cherish it," the first Harry said. "Keeps me humble."

"There's two of you," Rory remarked.

Amy was glad he did, because otherwise she would have done it, and she so liked to avoid pointing out the obvious. Although, around the Doctor it was inevitable that it would happen. Like right now.

"Good observational skills," the second Harry praised, gently mocking.

"How did you do that?" Amy exclaimed.

"I temporally halved myself," one of the Harry's non-explained. They sank onto the settee on each side of the Doctor, twined their arms around the Doctor's shoulders and leaned in very close. "And, guess what? I can keep it for a _long_ time."

The Doctor helplessly closed his eyes and buried his face in one of the Harrys' chest.

Rory was giving Amy a disconcertingly considering stare.

Amy was kind of glad that 'halving herself' was very certainly beyond her abilities. It begged the question, however, why it was within Harry's. "Are you a Time Lord?"

The Harrys chuckled. One of them – the one that wasn't nuzzling the Doctor's hair – replied: "Definitely not. I was born human. I'm not sure what I am now, but it's not a Time Lord. That would be too neat."

"Neat is boring," the Doctor _purred_.

Amy was briefly struck speechless. She hadn't known that the Doctor could purr.

The Harrys chuckled again, unsurprised.

x

"Poor Rory was so impressed," Harry said, smiling into his glass of dragon milk (which, contrary to its name, had nothing to do with either dragons or milk, and was in fact a cider-like drink made of local fruit).

Not so long ago, Harry had been similarly surprised by the concept, even though admittedly unimpressed.

The Doctor flopped back down onto the bed. It was indisputably Harry's bed – situated in Harry's home, in Harry's very bedroom, selected by Harry, bought by Harry, used by Harry (and whomever he invited into it) – and Harry was being purposely irritating in referring to it as 'their' bed. Theirs, as in the Doctor's and Harry's.

It was a very nice bed, of course, spacious enough to fit four people comfortably, soft but not overly so, and covered with imported bedclothes. The Doctor lay on his back, studied the darkened ceiling, and contemplated staying longer than just the night, as Harry insisted the Doctor and the Ponds absolutely had to.

"It is a clever trick," the Doctor said in defence of his – however incidentally he came to be – travelling companion. Because that was all that the trick was. Stage magic. Very clever stage magic, though, using laws of physics that the humans of the third millennium only dreamt of, and even that applied to just the most imaginative ones. Nonetheless, there was very little someone could do in a halved state, because it was impossible to sustain two mutually exclusive alternatives of self. That limited the uses of the trick to… well, yelling at oneself. Or having an argument, if one was willing to play Devil's advocate to himself for a while. It definitely couldn't be used for anything like what Rory imagined.

"How long has it been for you since Thoros Beta?" the Doctor asked.

Harry left the glass to float four feet off the floor and bent down to pick up his sash. He tightened the flimsy mint-green robe he was wearing with it. The Doctor fancifully thought that Harry should have been made to always wear mauve, if for no other reason than to warn all the unsuspecting inhabitants of the universe about how dangerous he could be if he put his mind to it. A creature of the Doctor's own creation, not through anything he had or had not done directly, but grown out of the consequences of his actions.

And he was beautiful. _Enchanting_.

Harry sat at the side of the bed. His fingers traced the Doctor's knee, soft and tickling. "Long," he said. "I've learned new languages since then. And I've read enough concurrent science fiction that I can imitate just about every feat of modern technology. _Including_ some quantum stuff."

"Quantum physics is nonsense," the Doctor declared. "All theory, and all based on a very primitive idea of the duality of particle and wave – and yes, it's a nice, tidy excuse for why there can be someone's two possible presents in the room at the same time, but it's like using a spoon to explain event horizons to a layman-"

"I'm a believer," Harry stated. "I don't need explanations."

"The shortest distance between two points is an abscissa," said the Doctor, meaning that of course it was most efficient for Harry to go from imagining the effect to effecting it, when it was within his ability. Most people weren't magical, and the feats they achieved were based on hard, factual, drudging science. He didn't take it ill of Harry that he didn't understand the technicalities because to Harry the technicalities were useless.

"What a very Euclidean thing to say," Harry chortled.

He offered the Doctor a hand, and the man unhappily but compliantly let himself be pulled out of the cushy bed and onto his feet. He grimaced as he catalogued the pieces of his outfit – not quite scattered across the room, but far from neatly folded on the chair – and he went to find some clean underwear in Harry's closet. Underwear was important, especially if you ran the risk of unexpectedly dying. There was nothing quite as ineffectually humiliating as dying in dirty underwear.

"I've got some of your things in the back there," Harry said after the Doctor had dived into the closet. "Take whatever you like, and come out whenever you're ready."

The door closed behind Harry with a snick, and the Doctor was once again reminded why he had not fought commitment in this case. Commitment was usually equated with eventual limitations, but Harry offered him more freedom than he needed, usually. Anyone else saying 'whatever' and 'whenever' to the Doctor wouldn't have meant it, but Harry… well, Harry did have the kind of time and money that were necessary to make such an offer true.

The Doctor liked to think that he had himself and Harry generally figured out, so he didn't spend nearly as much time as he could have going through allegedly his possessions that Harry was holding onto for him – he actually found a two-piece suit that would have fit someone half a foot taller with no sense of taste. A pinstripe suit? Really? Whatever had Harry seen in him? At least the incarnation before that had worn a leather jacket, even if his sense of humour had sucked.

He sorted himself out (Suspenders? Check. Bowtie? Check.) and ventured out of Harry's bedroom. He puttered around for a while, peeking into shelves, inside cases and behind furniture, before he finally let the sound of voices draw him to the kitchen. Harry had, apparently, chosen one of the little, practical models. It was ideal for a single person, or two people at the very most if they were friendly enough. Certainly, the architect had never meant for it to accommodate four.

Amy and Rory were sitting at the table crammed into the corner of the room, and Harry was leaning back against the counter, with his glass empty but still cradled in his hands.

"You're growing tea on your back-terrace?" the Doctor inquired, peering through the tall, narrow window. Tal Pen'ta was basically suburbia, but living space was still expensive here, and even _having_ a back-terrace must have cost a pretty credit. It would have been logical – too straightforwardly, stroke-like logical, now that he thought about it – for Harry to keep the most needed, most difficult to find plants at hand. It would have been true, too, if not for the fact that Harry probably kept his herb garden on Vel Consadene in the twelfth millennium, taking advantage of the rich soil and short orbit.

"How do _you_ not know that?" Amy inquired, alluding either to the Doctor's and Harry's relationship, which she, naturally, held to human standards, or to the Doctor's never-denied fondness for tea. He wasn't sure which.

"He never stays long enough in one place," Harry replied for him. "The record, I think, is two and half a day…" Briefly, he looked at the Doctor and then away, because it was really too soon after their otherwise very nice waking up to pick apart issues of imprisonment. Better to completely disregard involuntary residences.

"I would have stayed longer for the honeymoon," the Doctor offered, gratefully taking a steaming mug of tea from Harry's hands, "but the Imperial Guard chased us across the island."

Harry headed off Amy and Rory before they could ask. "Had something to do with system-wide arrest warrants and a case of mistaken identity. Don't ask."

Amy opened her mouth to do exactly that, but Rory – perhaps under the notion that it would be romantic – stuck a fork with a bit of _something_ Harry had offered as food into her mouth.

Amy dutifully chewed, swallowed, and then asked: "So you're… What? Married?" She seemed as comfortable with the notion as if she had grown up in the sixth millennium.

"_Ouney t hra matin_," Harry whispered.

The Doctor buried the fingers of his left hand in Harry's hair, and brought him closer, into a part-embrace. Harry smelled a lot like he had smelled yesterday, only without the added scent of pheromones and sweat and exertion that he had mostly showered off before breakfast.

"That's it," the Doctor chuckled. "The insanity of the illusion of sanity. The empty promise actually fulfilled. Personification of irony. Us."

"Personification is just a kind of metaphor. I think," Harry pointed out, leaning into the embrace. The instinct to soak up as much of the Doctor was a testament to how rarely they spent any kind of time together.

"What?" Rory asked succinctly.

"I don't get it," Amy seconded him. "What are you talking about?"

"Us," the Doctor replied, disentangling himself and drinking his tea. It was good tea. Not amazing, not even really delicious, but it was okay, and warm, and available.

Harry deposited his empty glass onto the countertop and expounded: "Us spanning the silences, bridging the emptiness. We're more apart than together – always have been, always will be – but we still belong to each other." He shrugged. "The marriage itself was just… fun." He was probably the only human born in the twentieth century who could say that to their partner of decades and mean it. Well, the Doctor thought decades, but it was more like ages. Time. A whole lot of it, causally scattered and fitting into a pattern so complicated that he refused to think about it, half-afraid that it would shatter into quadrillions of tiny facets under the weight of scrutiny.

"It was!" the Doctor agreed, grinning, because the grin usually made the gullible people not suspect the presence of deeper thought. "I had never gotten _Earth-married_ before."

Harry caught his clue perfectly. He smiled at Rory and Amy, and then at the Doctor. "I thought that if I should ever marry again, it's got to be you."

The Doctor met Harry's eyes – today without the glasses, which he had forgotten on his bedside – and they exchanged their impressions.

-dawning day, green field, skeleton of a future spaceport terminal sticking up toward the cloud-littered sky, sneaking in through the backdoors, alcohol, running, laughing, running, sex, running-

-last remnants of the religion-free bureaucratic office, scowling man, scowling woman, smiling woman, and a perfunctory, formulaic ceremony-

"We did all the fancy Earthian promises!" the Doctor laughed, as Harry's predominant impressions jogged his memory. "All the good and bad, war and peace-"

"Health and sickness," Harry interposed dryly.

"-crime and punishment-"

"That's Dostoyevsky," Harry pointed out.

"War and Peace is Tolstoy," the Doctor objected, pouting.

"Oh, never mind," Harry dismissed the issue. They were still looking at each other, both thinking 'till death do us part.' Harry knew it would, because the Doctor was going to die his final death one day, and Harry wouldn't. Maybe Harry would even be there for the end of the universe, with only Jack Harkness for company. That was a bleak thought.

The Doctor knew that everyone had to die one day, and that he was one of the everyone, but Harry wasn't. Not anymore. Not really. They were both good at denying it, but denying it felt like they were passing each other a hot piece of carbon and waiting which one of them would drop it.

"I'm done!" Amy announced, putting down her spoon. She stood from the table and passed her bowl to Harry. "So, are we going to have a tour now? Because I think we've been hanging around one place long enough-"

"Just like each other," Harry said to Rory, and they exchanged long-suffering looks.

"Can't sit still for two seconds," Rory agreed. "We love them, though?" he ventured.

"Oh, come on!" the Doctor protested. "Car'Antares is _boring_! The most exciting thing that's happened here in ages was a peaceful revolution, and that was a hundred and five years ago. Let's go somewhere exciting!"

"What do you say, Harry?" Amy asked challengingly. "Are you up for it?"

The Doctor grinned. Oh, what a redundant question.


	4. sek on t hra matin

A/N4: So this is it. This is how I imagine romance happening between two uberpowerful, old, time-and-space travelling incurable philanthropists. Thank you, everybody, for your support!

Brynn

x

Taking Advantage: _sek on t hra matin_

x

_2,059 Earthtime, Earth, United Europe_

x

He called.

The Doctor had never expected him to call, to be truthful. Well, he wasn't always the best judge of character, but he had thought that he had pegged the Family of Blood quite well and… thinking again, maybe his judgment had been a bit clouded by rage at that time.

Also, he now realised, there was very little they wouldn't do for one another. Affection was the force behind almost everything the Family had done, even if it was affection to the exclusion of everybody not of the Blood. He loved his Sister. He wanted, very desperately, to buy her forgiveness. Therefore he sank into his role, he became what the Doctor had ordered him to become, and when the time came, he called.

The Doctor had wanted, more than anything, to run, to leave this place and time so he wouldn't have to think about what he had attempted to do and what he had done. With no limitations set it was oh so easy to play with his power, to try and fight against eventuality and to destroy everything in a moment of vainglory. _Adelaide Brooke_ had saved _him_. And that was unfair. It should have been the other way around.

He so hated feeling ashamed of himself.

"These are my just desserts, aren't they, girl?" he asked of the TARDIS, tempted to run away anyway, but knowing that she wouldn't let him. At least he had her.

She responded by opening her door and quite unceremoniously chucking him out into the street where she was parked, not even letting him grab a coat. He was going to freeze.

"Oh well," he grumbled as she slammed her door shut behind him.

He picked a direction – away from the sea, from the lights in the distance, from the teeming centre of the city – and started walking. His hands grew colder with every passing minute, and he petulantly contemplated if it was a kind of corporal punishment. After a while, he started jogging to keep himself warm enough. He was good at self-flagellation when the mood struck him, but right now he had enough residual anger and curiosity driving him, and wasn't sinking into depression just yet. He ran. Past the houses, across the suburbia, through the grove, across another township, ran until industrial centres gave way to storage houses and those gave way to grassy plains and the beginnings of a forest.

He ran until he arrived in a field, frozen, covered with a thin layer of snow, black and white in the early hour, guarded by a scarecrow limply hanging from a stake.

"You called?" he asked – _wheezed_, actually. He was tired, thirsty, hungry, still annoyed and childishly hurt, cold was seeping back in under his suit and the sweaty shirt, and he knew he was badly off when a memory of his childhood resurfaced, and he wished someone would hold him, just for the comfort, without asking for anything.

The scarecrow shuddered. Dim green light appeared in the depths of its straw-filled head, and it laboriously lifted its arms-like appendages.

'Doctor,' it signed.

"What do you want?" the Doctor asked, bouncing on the spot to retain at least a little of the warmth he had accumulated during the run.

This would have gone so much easier if he could communicate with the Son telepathically, but the protector of the fields of England was either being stubborn, or too stretched to manage any significant telepathy.

'Sister,' the scarecrow demanded. 'Freedom.' He paused, expectant, but once it became obvious that the Doctor was not going to relent, he added: 'Danger. Explain.'

The Doctor had to admit that he had been unusually, and perhaps unnecessarily cruel when he had judged and sentenced the Family of Blood to eternal punishment. They had had to be stopped, yes, but he ever prided himself on being merciful, and there had really been no mercy. The Family had been neither Daleks nor Cybermen, and the manner in which he had dealt with them had been extreme and fuelled by negative emotion – the result of having had nine centuries of memories, of which most were not nice at all or at least tinged with the ubiquitous sorrow and loss, crammed into his mind, with only a laughable warning.

"First the explanation," he demanded. If nothing else, he should have allowed them the relief of death. These punishments truly were unconscionable.

The scarecrow lifted its arms again, when the ground began to buzz. The buzz quickly grew into a rumble, and before the Doctor could pinpoint the source, there was a distant roar of detonation and the earth split beneath his feet.

It was too late to run.

The Earth's crust was being ripped apart, and the Doctor stood right on the spot where the chasm would appear-

The Son resided in _every_ scarecrow, so there was no need to worry about him.

There was, however, the need to worry about the man that sprinted across the field towards the Doctor – into the danger.

"Stop!" the Doctor shouted.

The ground moved. The Doctor lost his footing, and then the chasm appeared and it seemed as if he had remained suspended in the air for a prolonged instance before gravity caught up to him and pulled him down, into the depths of the planet (well, most likely only a couple hundred feet downwards).

The Doctor felt cheated – where were the four knocks he should have heard before his death? – when the sprinting man he thought he might have imagined earlier jumped over the newly-created edge of the ravine after the Doctor. They crashed together in midair; the man madly struggled for a grip, and then something theoretically impossible happened.

The Doctor's physical body was spontaneously forced through hyperspace. The whole experience lasted for almost seven tenths of a second. He, much to his surprise, survived the journey.

The Doctor and the running madman ripped through the event horizon back into the regular four set of dimensions and promptly fell into a body of heavily chlorinated water.

They treaded their individual ways to the surface – the Doctor noted artificial lighting overhead and guessed they were in a swimming pool – and spat out water. The Doctor coughed. The stranger checked on him, found him capable of unassisted swimming, and by tugging on his soaked-through jacket set the direction toward the edge.

They climbed out and paused to catch their breath, before the stranger spoke: "Sorry about that. I suck at redirecting kinetic energy. I did my best to reduce our momentum, but it's always safer to appear above water."

The Doctor decided not to be too cross, considering that his newest acquaintance had saved his life. Maybe all his remaining lives. He didn't see how regenerating on the bottom of a chasm would have helped him get out. There was still the travelling through hyperspace that needed to be addressed, but that could wait until they had found a way of drying themselves, because – he had been told – pneumonia wasn't a nice way to die. Better than ingesting the chemicals humans used for rodent control, or burning to death or radiation poisoning or decompression, but still not nice.

The Doctor flopped to his side and narrowed his eyes at his rescuer. "Oh, hello," he said. "You seem familiar."

"I would," the stranger replied (ironically) dryly, and without further ado lifted himself off the tiled floor. He stood and stretched in a way that made it obvious he was used to perfunctorily cataloguing the functionality of his limbs.

The Doctor recognised a man who took tumbles routinely and relished in that lifestyle.

"Are we acquainted?" he asked. He liked to think that he remembered the people who would remember him, but there were always mass media to propagate his myth and… well… too many cultures thought he was a god as it was.

Luckily, though, it seemed that his rescuer wasn't suffering under any such delusion.

"Not that I remember," the man said, pulling what looked like a wooden rod out of his water-soaked sleeve. "I seem to have contracted a vicious strain of celebrity."

The Doctor grinned and climbed to his feet as well, his eyes glued to the potential weapon. A memory surfaced, many disappointments ago, a brief meeting and yet briefer explanation. "Is that a magic wand?" he inquired.

The stranger seemed a little taken aback by the Doctor's enthusiasm, but the expression was quickly erased from his face. His stance shifted; a pair of bespectacled, startling green eyes suspiciously surveyed the Doctor from his converse shoes to his perpetually unmanageable, and presently plastered to his skull, hair.

"Okay…" the man said noncommittally, and then shrugged to himself. "Yes. You don't seem very surprised, but at the same time you don't seem like you've ever seen one before…?"

It was a very nice, comprehensive observation, of course, and the Doctor would have applauded, but there were so much more pressing matters that he decided to postpone his admiration and sort out his priorities.

"I'm not from around here," he explained, bouncing. It really was quite bitingly cold, still, although that was probably his perception, since he had been cold before he had taken a swim and climbed out into an air-conditioned poolroom.

The man surveyed him again, paying much attention to the sonic screwdriver clutched in the Doctor's hand. "Not from Newport, not British, or not terrestrial?" he asked.

The Doctor couldn't quite stop himself from doing the fish impression – the human was a little stupefying, even aside from the whole magic thing. And magic reminded him of Harry, and now that he thought about it, the stranger looked a lot like Harry, or rather he looked like Harry would have looked if Harry was older, maybe the equivalent of forty years of human age, because even after all this time the Doctor had not yet found a sufficient explanation for what or who Harry was (Jack didn't count, because Jack was wrong and the Doctor would have noticed something that wrong about someone he had just met, and if he by some miracle hadn't, the TARDIS certainly wouldn't have liked Harry so much). Still, the resemblance was uncanny. The facial structure, the eye-colour, the spectacles, the hair, all resembled the teenage-looking magically inclined intruder he had met.

"Yes," the Doctor said.

"I generally don't like to assume," the stranger spoke, accepting the response at face value with the same aplomb with which the Doctor had accepted magic – and obviously that meant he had at least as much familiarity with extraterrestrials as the Doctor had with magic – and then he started waving the wand around. He looked very picturesquely fantastical. "In this case, however, I'd like to believe that you weren't one of the group that had planted and set off that device."

The Doctor's head swivelled at the mention of a device. He determined his current position in relation to his previous one near Newport, mentally measured the ravine that had been created, extrapolated what kind of technology could have been used to create it and counted how much energy it would have needed and where it would have been located. Two seconds later, he replied: "I'm not, but I'm also fairly sure it was a bastardised Malmooth terra-forming shaker-upper – and let me just express how very limited your language is – but it's definitely not the Malmooth using it, so you're most likely dealing with a different species or an interspecies association. What is it about this planet? Everyone wants it! Everyone! Take it or use it or destroy it or just sell its nuclear fallout to the highest bidder – do you know? In just a bit more than a decade, there's going to be Cybermen up there," the Doctor exclaimed, pointing upwards to the ceiling-obscured Moon. "That's another thing, the Cybermen. Is it just me, or are they like cockroaches?"

"A strangely Earthian similitude for a self-proclaimed alien, Mister," the stranger replied. He didn't seem like he had ignored the Doctor's soliloquy, but it had definitely left him way too impassive. For a human. If he was human. Because if he was Harry, he might not have been human.

Oh, he was _interesting_.

"It's 'Doctor'," the Doctor said. "And there's nothing Earthian about it. Cockroaches invaded your planet long before any other extraterrestrial species, and they did it covertly and non-confrontationally, so it was a few millennia before anyone noticed, and by then they could claim acquisitive prescription."

The Doctor turned back to his companion and found him looking up from whatever 'incantation' he had been so occupied with. "Another 'Doctor'?" the man asked, mouth curving in a rather unpleasant downward curl. "And I suppose you're the 'the' Doctor as well?" He, sadly, disregarded all the interesting information about his fellow species.

"The…" the Doctor paused, thinking about how to answer that little trick question, before he settled on: "…the only 'the'?" At least, he had never known of another Doctor. It was quite possible, naturally – there were only so many unique appellations available to the Time Lords – but even so, helping other species had never been high on any Gallifreyan list. Also, compassion had been considered almost shameful. Which, in hindsight, was one of the reasons why the Doctor had been ridiculed by his peers, and also why he found humans to be so amazing.

The stranger (who, now that Doctor thought about it, most likely _was_ Harry) gave him another considering look, so the Doctor hastened to add: "But, you could say that I get a new face every once in a while."

x

Harry had originally thought that causality was a pain in the arse, but after he had learned to live in it and had become familiar with its pitfalls, he could appreciate the amount of sense it made. It was still nauseatingly, headache-inducingly complicated at times, of course. For example, there had been that one report of his in the MAGIC division of the UNIT archives, dated from 2059, that he would discover in 2209 by triggering a hidden subroutine in a search engine by changing his password to Car22Har?08Mar_Fri/132.

The report mentioned his as-of-yet inexperienced participation in the obligatory saving of the Earth from an alien group. He had glimpsed the word 'Doctor' in the report before he had closed it to prevent himself from learning more than he should have known. Of course he had Apparated back (hundred and fifty years), and of course his uncanny instinct – and some unusual readings – led him to the spot where the first device was set off.

Also, naturally, he had managed to save someone before he had even taken a good look around.

Less routinely, said person claimed to be an extraterrestrial, and Harry was inclined to believe him. His other claim about changing his face was a little less probable – the known species that could morph at will were aggressive, carnivorous and possessed of extremely low verbal intelligence.

"The old one gets out of fashion? Or you get bored looking into the mirror?" Harry mused mockingly, trying to gauge the person he had saved. He had a niggling feeling that the guy would be trouble, but there just wasn't the usual evil vibe. Also, he was inclined to believe the 'Malmooth shaker-upper' explanation.

The Doctor – provided he was telling the truth – proactively found the nearest exit and started unlocking it using a buzzing little cylindrical device with what looked like blue LED light on top.

"You could say it's a genetic predisposition," the Doctor replied, grinning when the lock clicked and whirred and the door obediently slid aside. "I cannot quite control it. Not like you do. If you're the 'the' Harry Potter, then I think this is not what you really look like."

"Why would you think that?" Harry inquired, scowling freely, since he was following the Doctor into the vacant corridor illuminated with pale blue energy-saving pharos panels.

He hadn't bothered to check his glamour against his contemporary pictures before he had Apparated, but he didn't think he had miscalculated enough for it to be immediately apparent to someone who didn't even know him personally.

The alternative was, of course, that the Doctor already knew him – similarly to how a 'the' Doctor had already known Harry more than two hundred years ago (from Harry's perspective) in Surrey.

"You look different in twenty seventy, when I return your ape," the Doctor replied, waving at a security camera mounted in the corner of a stairwell.

"My- What do you mean, _my_ ape? I had never seen the ape before!" Harry exclaimed, momentarily forgetting that he was chronologically _before_ twenty seventy, and therefore should know nothing about an attempted Cybermen invasion, or any celebrations after it would fall through, and least of all anything about a monkey. The monkey still stumped him, as did the man that had delivered it. Harry had seen the face in his pensieve often enough to be sure he would recognise the man if he met him, but almost hundred and forty years had gone by and no luck.

But if the Doctor really could change his face, it might have been him… except that each of the three men Harry had met that had introduced themselves as 'the' Doctor was completely different, not only in appearance, but in speech and attitude, too.

Damn Harry's inborn aversion toward all libraries and archives! If he had been Hermione, he would have done his research on 'the Doctor' as soon as the MAGIC had negotiated an information exchange with the UNIT.

_Supposing_ this man was the same person, he and Harry would get to know each other. Harry still wasn't sure how he felt about that, and presently concentrated on sabotaging UNIT surveillance, since the Doctor obviously wasn't going to do it. The first negotiations between UNIT and MAGIC would be initiated next year (for all he knew, it would happen _because_ of his presence here and now), which basically meant that UNIT would automatically consider him a threat, not to mention that he had just spontaneously appeared in the basement of their training facility with an alien in tow, seconds after some alien group had attacked Earth. Best to avoid contact.

"I believe that," the Doctor conceded (Harry had to mentally backtrack to figure out he was still talking about the monkey). "Either way, I should like to inform you that you wanted to meet me at Car'Antares the day after the Kakumei – your later self requested that I tell your earlier self."

Harry let his wand down, satisfied that both he and the Doctor were under Notice-me-not spells and enveloped in personal dead-zones for any scanners and detectors used on Earth up to the beginning of the twenty-third century.

"Thanks, I suppose," he said, with light irony. Now if only he knew where was the 'Car Antares' place and what was the 'Kakumei.' Or _when_ was the 'Kakumei,' at least. It seemed that Harry was going to lose objectivity about his past knowledge if he would have thought that this message would mean anything to him now.

The Doctor, untouched by sarcasm, clasped his hands behind his back and grinned. "Oh, it's my pleasure. And speaking of pleasure-" He found another password-protected door and pulled his handy little device to do Merlin-knew-what to the electronic lock. "-I always thought that it was ridiculous to delegate it to second place after work. Work should be pleasure, or at the very least it should be pleasure for those of us smart enough to ponder if it should be pleasure. Also-"

"You hate silence a lot, don't you?" Harry inquired, not as much out of curiosity as simply to halt the avalanche of purposeless words.

"It's deafening," the Doctor returned without thinking about it and straightened from his examination of the electric lock. Which did, apparently, somehow, become unlocked.

"What is that thing, anyway?" Harry asked, squinting at the wonder-device. He didn't recall seeing it with either of the 'previous Doctors.'

"A sonic screwdriver," the Doctor explained, leading the way out into frigid November.

A wall of cold slammed into both of them, and Harry closed his mind against the stinging killer-snowflakes that attacked his face. "Not a weapon?" he pressed through chattering teeth.

"No," the Doctor replied in the same tone, and decisively moved back into the temperature-regulated corridor. "No weapons."

"A pacifist?" Harry guessed, and finally managed to get his wand to comply. A moment later he was comfortable, with his work clothes (he had given up on robes after he had left his family) back in a usable state. He could have cursed himself for being too bloody distracted to think about keeping himself alive and healthy. And hale.

"A Doctor," the Doctor replied, staring cross-eyed at the eddy of snowflakes that formed between his hands after Harry had made them both temporarily impervious. "What was that?"

"A Drying and a Warming Charm," Harry explained. "I don't want you to catch your death. Also, it would be wise not to leave a wet trail wherever we go." Not that it would matter if they were going outside. Harry didn't like the idea, but needs must. Besides, he disliked the idea of the Earth being invaded and/or destroyed by aliens much more intensely.

"Thank you," the Doctor said absently, and surveyed the exterior of the mostly darkened training facility. "I need to contact the people we want to stop and then I want to know all about spontaneous, unassisted hyperspace-travel."

Harry sighed. He should have known. Nevertheless, he nodded and decided to Apparate for the abandoned Torchwood Four facility, since it had all the technology they needed and none of the people that would get in the way. Plus the Fidelius Charm – ever so practical.

x

Harry didn't actually do much explaining about his way of travelling – not that he had much to explain. He didn't even use the three 'D's anymore, so it was really just a think-will-push process for him. A split second decision with a flex of his mental muscles at best. It was easy.

He hadn't known that Apparition was using hyperspace, and if he was to be truthful, he didn't have a clue what 'hyperspace' _was_.

"This is Torchwood Four," the Doctor pointed out, running around a quaintly cyberpunk bridge and examining the equipment. It seemed as if he had already gotten over the bout of pouting Harry's explanation of 'it's magic' had elicited. "But Torchwood Four was lost!"

Harry shrugged, perched on a sofa that had lasted through the time only thanks to some preservation charms, and turned on the computer on the table in front of him. It obviously didn't belong there, but he was an honourary purveyor of chaos, so he was duty-bound to support some disorganisation. "Yes, the Royal Family lost it. And maybe someone found it and made sure they wouldn't get it back anytime soon."

The Doctor glanced up. "Magic?"

Harry noncommittally inclined his head. His computer was old – late twentieth century, laced with alien technology. The keyboard was familiar, though, and he didn't have much trouble with the software, since it was English and purposely user-friendly. He set about resurrecting the base's receivers and activating subroutines that, theoretically, should have copied data from other Torchwood bases.

This place was Hermione's pet project. Officially, it belonged to MAGIC, but the organisation had decades to go before it was ready to start actively reacting to the threat from space, and as of yet only Hermione's inner circle would have known and tended to this place. Harry himself, certainly, and Hugo, then Hermione's colleagues Megan Jones, Delta Chant, Perdita Durand, Euan Abercrombie, the Harpers, in twenty years or so Susan Foreman, and the triplets Weasley were the elite that had (would) put together this place and prepare it for use later on.

The Doctor continued puttering around and mumbling to himself. He never switched languages, which was the first indication Harry had that the Doctor _wasn't_ actually speaking English and their mutual understanding was the result of technology so advanced it was indiscernible from magic.

"You're crossing your own timeline," the Doctor accused, out of blue.

Harry blinked. He supposed that, to someone smarter than he was, he might have given enough clues to come to that conclusion, but he was glad that it wasn't expected of him to trace the progression of that deduction.

"Predetermination," Harry replied. He wasn't in the mood to explain that he was once again doing something he knew he would do because he had already done it. Besides, if the Doctor was who he said he was, he understood better than anyone. "Have a look at this. Maybe you can find something."

The Doctor plopped onto the sofa next to Harry, put on a pair of glasses almost as ridiculous as Harry's used to be, and accepted the keyboard Harry passed him. He started typing, much too fast for Harry to follow.

"Tea?" Harry offered.

"Hot," the Doctor replied, not taking his eyes off the screen.

Harry went off to find the supplies. He could have conjured the tea, but conjured food was little but imitation, and after the half-hour he and the Doctor had had, they deserved real warm drinks. Besides, it was soothing. Harry gladly took the time off from saving the world to make tea. He could think, for a while, free of the pressure.

He wasn't certain of the Doctor. What he remembered was vastly different from what he was seeing, and this new face of the Doctor seemed to be coupled with an indurate attitude. Certainly, the thirty-five or so minutes since the shaker-upper had gone off couldn't be taken as a true indication of the man's character. Still, Harry's dislike of people who were looking for _something_ in him was deep-seated, and stemmed from a lifetime of being pressured to live up to his own reputation. The Doctor wasn't being exactly dismissive, but Harry felt it rather keenly that the man was looking beyond Harry, for something that he had expected to find but wasn't seeing.

If they knew each other in Harry's future that was the Doctor's past, that made sense. Nevertheless, Harry disliked the sensation.

He returned to the bridge-like room with a tea-tray, shrouded in the herbal smell of the brew.

"I found them!" the Doctor reported excitedly, grinning at Harry. "I'm establishing connection. You want to see?"

"Not really," Harry replied. He set the tray down onto the table, next to the computer display, and took a seat on the nearest swivel chair.

The Doctor filled his cup, drained it, filled it again and drained it again. Then he sighed in contentment. Apparently, his digestive track was made of asbestos, or otherwise his cells weren't based on proteins, and Harry decided quickly not to let his mind go down that path, because it definitely wasn't big and bad enough to go by itself. It might have gotten lost. Or robbed. Or raped and murdered. Biology wasn't his forte. Frankly, nothing scientific was.

"What are we dealing with?" Harry inquired, while the screen proudly displayed 'INITIALIZING.' He wondered why the software was American. Or if it wasn't, why it would use American English. He had met enough aliens to know that even they preferred British English.

"Someone new!" the Doctor claimed. "At least, I've never met them. Or heard of them. But I was right – they're a mixed group. Interspecies."

"Any ideas what they want with our planet?" Harry asked, but then the 'INITIALIZING' notice disappeared and a green, hedgehog-like – or was it cactus-like? – face appeared in its place.

"Greetings," the Doctor said. "I am the Doctor."

The Vinvocci (Harry hadn't met one of those before, but they looked fantastical enough for him to remember what the race was called) said something that Harry couldn't understand but which, judging by his expression and tone, was a curse.

Harry almost reflexively hexed the Doctor when he felt two fingers touching his temple.

"-your education is of no consequence," the Vinvocci was saying. "You are complicit of crimes against the natural environment of this planet. Your jury agreed unanimously. You were judged guilty. Your punishment is death."

"I have the right to meet my accuser face to face!" the Doctor demanded.

The Vinvocci sneered. "You have only the rights which we allow you. This is not one of them. You have the right to surrender. You have the right to pray to your deity. You have the right to die."

Harry and the Doctor exchanged worried glances. Harry wasn't sure if the Doctor was feeling the same vibe he was, but there was definitely a Dark-Lord-esque undertone to the speech. Sure, the Vinvocci was only a representative of a group, but maybe genocidal megalomania was contagious?

"I have a complaint about your conduct," the Doctor said, apparently pursuing a different parallel. "I wish to speak with your manager."

The Vinvocci hesitated and turned to someone out of the range of the webcam.

A growl of exasperation could be heard, and then the point of view shifted and they were looking at a scowling – as much as it was possible for this species to convey scowling – Blowfish.

"We only obey the laws of nature!" the Blowfish exclaimed, as the very picture of hubris. "Speak to nature, if you think it will help you, human! Pray and beg! See if she forgives you for the suffering you caused her!"

"Your ship is the old model of Proxima Cruiser's Discus line," the Doctor pointed out. "It's been recalled from circulation eighty-seven years after the last vessel was produced, because it was fuelled by exhaustible resources-"

The Vinvocci flinched.

"Our engines have been modified, human. We need not justify ourselves to you!" the Blowfish snarled.

"I so hate being called human," the Doctor muttered under his breath.

"Should have gotten a different face then," Harry replied just as quietly, smirking a little.

"I got stuck with it because I spend so much time saving your people," the Doctor grumbled. "It's your fault for being so brilliant. For a pack of primates."

"Silence!" It was the first time Harry had ever heard a fish hiss.

"No one here recognises your legal authority," Harry told the Blowfish and the cringing Vinvocci, who was staring at the screen, which must have been full of the Doctor's face, since the man was leaning in really close to the camera. Harry observed the horror growing on the green face. Maybe the Doctor did have the kind of reputation he had implied by using the definite article. "You have committed an act of war against the citizens of this planet. Therefore, we declare war on you. You have half an hour to surrender, before we attack!"

The Doctor glared at Harry.

Would that the other aliens had taken Harry's bluff (Torchwood Four didn't have any weapons to speak of, much less something capable of destroying an orbiting ship, and Harry had never heard of any magic that could be used on such a scope) at least half as seriously, because they merely laughed. That was, the Blowfish and some of its flunkies who were standing out of sight laughed; the Vinvocci shivered.

"Oooh!" a Hoix appeared on the screen. "Kitten's got claws!"

"Can you get any more cliché?" Harry complained. He leaned over to the Doctor and put the call on hold by pressing a combination of keys Hermione had drummed into his head once upon a time. "Are you _sure_ they're alien?"

The Doctor nodded vigorously, frowning at the screen. "Yes, they are – of course they are alien. They definitely aren't human. Your human psychiatry, and let me just say how much I don't like that, never mind that you people trundle around calling it _science_ of all things, and it's got nothing to do with whatever diagnosis I might or might not have had forced upon me back – _forth_, actually – in the day, but anyway, no one of your species who loves nature to this degree is considered sane. Which is saying something, because your species invented the electric toilet brush. But-"

"You digress," Harry cut him off.

"So I do. I do that. I digress," the Doctor agreed, nodding to himself. "What I was going to say is that yes, they are alien, and yes, they are smart enough to have watched and studied the planet they were going to 'liberate of the oppression of the sentient species brutalising it' for long enough to learn the general expectations of villainy a local person would have."

"Ah…" Harry had seen far more farfetched things than aliens watching bad movies to find out how to intimidate people. Actually, that even sort of made sense. "Out of curiosity, do those general expectations include a long-winded victory speech in which they would explain their entire dastardly plan just to watch us squirm and beg and cry and escape at the last moment to save the day… you think?"

The Doctor froze with his hands suspended an inch above the keyboard. His jaw sank and he straightened, open-mouthed, to stare at Harry for a moment, before his mind went 'zing' and he pointed both forefingers at Harry's chest. "Harry Potter… I like the way your mind works."

He re-activated the connection.

"So," the Doctor said, "my friends don't want to admit it, but I know we don't stand a chance." His act wasn't all that believable, but that was okay, because – with the exception of the Vinvocci – the group was too busy patting their backs to observe the proceedings more closely.

"I see you are smarter, human!" the Blowfish said smarmily. "Of all those useless organisations who called us, you are the only one to know when you're finished!"

The Doctor grimaced.

Harry clucked his tongue to attract the man' attention, then shook his head and mouthed 'act cowed,' which, admittedly, must have been difficult to decipher without the sound. Harry sighed. He was so much better than the Doctor at looking pathetic.

"This UNIT! And the Queen of the Britain! What is it Britain? One measly island!" the Blowfish was exclaiming needlessly enthusiastically. "And the Torchwood! And the USA! All the little people, separated into tiny little nations, like a race for who is going to destroy the nature faster! Shame on you!" He hesitated, and then a sneer stretched across his face. "_Death_ on you!"

"We'll stop you," Harry claimed, from out of sight, putting as much desperation into the claim as he could.

The Doctor's fists were clenched, very theatrically conveying the same message.

It was a Malmooth who broke first, letting them have their much-desired crumbs that would lead them to their objective: "Mur - you cannot hope to stop us - chak! Mur – we will set off the blasts simultaneously at twenty-seven locations-"

"Silence!" the Blowfish commanded.

"Oh, let Murchak have his minute of glory," an honest-to-Merlin Raxacoricofallapatorian spoke up, and gestured the Malmooth to continue. "It was his idea, after all."

"Mur – the program has already been activated – chak!"

"What?" The Blowfish rapidly turned around and practically ran to a console. "What part of 'wait on my orders' didn't you understand?"

"The part where it's you giving the orders," the Raxacoricofallapatorian said unapologetically.

"You've got twenty-eight minutes, but I bet you can't stop the countdown," a Bruydac informed the Blowfish gleefully.

"We should get out of here before the Judoon come down on us," the Vinvocci advised.

The Malmooth scoffed. "Mur – yes, so very intelligent – chak. Mur – then the signal will not be sent and the devices will not be detonated – chak."

At this point the Doctor cut the transmission. He stood up, prompting Harry to follow the example.

"Are you thinking what I am thinking?" the Doctor asked, setting the keyboard down onto the table.

"Probably not," Harry replied candidly.

The Doctor put his glasses away and clapped. "Malmooth devices activated from a Proxima vessel mainframe means that they operate in the usual four dimensions and therefore have a transmitter that can be disabled without causing any unwanted side-effects that would rip apart this reality, which means that if we can get on that ship and disable the transmitter and persuade our nature-loving friends to give up their dastardly plan-"

"Merlin save me from eternal optimism," Harry grumbled. He was right in that they were thinking very different things. His idea had been to invade and seize the ship by force. He doubted any of the extraterrestrials had ever faced magic, so it wasn't going to be much of a challenge.

The Doctor dismissively waved his hand. "Pfft! You have the ability to transport both of us across space to a point of your choosing. _I_ have a _sonic screwdriver_. They won't know what hit them!"

Harry didn't really see the disadvantages of going through with the plan. If it would fall through, like he was almost certain it would, there would be no problem with switching tactics to a shitload of Stunnings and Petrifications and seizing the ship for the good of the human race and profit of the MAGIC.

"Hug?" Harry asked, opening his arms for the Side-along Apparition.

"Don't mind if I do," the Doctor replied, grinning, and stepped forth.

x

"Someone has a sick sense of humour," Harry opined.

The Doctor didn't really agree, but this one time he didn't have the support to argue the veracity of Harry's implication. Scenarios were running through his head as he stared upwards (relatively) at the bottom of what was the transmitter, welded into the hull during the boasted engine upgrades.

Structural harm to the transmitter would be harm to the hull, which would kill them all, with the possible exception of Harry (and he was sure it was Harry, because there couldn't be two such men in the universe).

To use the sonic he needed a certain interface, which was apparently out there in the vacuum.

He didn't have a pressure suit handy.

The ship was old and unauthorised alterations had been made to it, so it couldn't withstand either a crash landing, or partial structural damage.

The crew was hostile, so Harry couldn't safely transport them out of harm's way.

Last, the _crew was hostile_, so the Doctor couldn't get to the mainframe (where they had gathered to watch the results of their terra-forming) and sabotage the countdown from there.

"It is a bit of a pickle," he agreed.

"As I said, sick sense of humour," Harry repeated, looking askance at the Doctor.

"What about magic?" the Doctor asked. It seemed prudent at this point.

"That would be cheating," Harry pointed out mockingly, and then, seriously, continued: "I don't know what I'd be doing. I'd probably kill everyone aboard, the two of us included. And that's not to speak of what could happen if magic works differently in space than it does on the surface of the planet. No ley lines up here."

"Somebody didn't make their homework," the Doctor complained, but he was already brainstorming again, so he didn't pay attention to any possible response. It was difficult to pick apart the options when none of them were truly impossible, only very, very difficult. He also didn't have an accurate estimate of Harry's skills, so there was a limit to how much he could rely on the other man.

"If we neutralise them, what would we do with them?" Harry asked. "Give them to UNIT? Or Torchwood?"

It was a valid question. In the year 2059, the UNIT had changed from what it had once been into a rather mercenary organisation. They were still reasonably friendly, even helpful, to the Doctor, but they had stopped being human and became _human_ instead.

"Give them the chance to leave-"

"And do this to some other planet?" Harry cut in, scowling as if it was the Doctor's fault that there were creatures who refused to refrain from harming other creatures.

The Doctor wasn't such an optimist that he would believe a word of an already established terrorist. Nevertheless, he wasn't a policeman, and it wasn't his business what anyone was doing, unless it threatened those whom he had chosen to protect. If it was some other planet, not Earth, then the Doctor wouldn't be there, striving to protect the inhabitants. Full stop.

He recalled that his previous incarnation thought that Harry was much too nice. Now he could see why.

"I've seen your kind of mercy before," Harry spat. "Give them a chance, and another, and another, because we must be kind and just and magnanimous. And who gives a damn about the innocents they'll kill tomorrow?"

The Doctor found himself looking into a pair of green eyes. The gaze directed at him was scorching him.

"Because, Doctor," Harry continued in a lower tone, "you don't like to think about it, but with every second chance you offer to someone who had already proved themselves inclined to kill, you are robbing many others of their first chances."

The Doctor could hear his hearts beating madly. He could believe that he would love and hate such a man as Harry in equal measures.

"Those others are not my responsibility," the Doctor countered weakly. He was just giving a token protest, and Harry knew it.

"_With great power comes great responsibility_," Harry quoted a little banally. "Your inaction can result in people's suffering. Yes, you're right, they're not your responsibility. Tell yourself that when you can't fall asleep at night for the weight of your conscience."

"Damn you…" the Doctor whispered. "I won't become a killer."

"Someone like you already is," Harry said cruelly, "if only inadvertently. People like us – we carry a kind of aura that effects everything we touch. We can't stop everyone from dying. Sometimes we have to make hard decisions, because even not making a decision is making a decision for us-"

"Enough," the Doctor ordered. He set his jaw, pulled his shoulders back, and strode off toward the exit that would lead him to engineering. He would find a space suit and do this the hard way.

And then he would offer them the chance to leave.

x

Harry wasn't really seething mad at the Doctor, more like annoyed.

Yes, he could understand the feeling of emptiness that came with being the last, being left behind. And he could sympathise with the horror and self-disgust that every moral being felt at killing another moral being, no matter if the morals were somehow skewed. It was pointless to agonise about it – he still remembered the ridiculous amount of self-flagellation to which he had subjected himself as a child after he had found that the prophecy would force him to kill – but that didn't mean manslaughter should ever become mundane.

The Doctor and Harry were both beings that affected the universe just by existing. It was forever, it was exhausting and oftentimes plain depressing, but it was fact and Harry wasn't going to close his eyes to it.

That was the reason why he was now standing in the centre of the alien ship's bridge, after he had Stunned all present crew-members (easy, taking into account that they had never before encountered magic and that he was wearing Notice-me-not and Disillusionment Spells) except the Vinvocci, who was trying to make himself as small as possible, hiding under a console, never mind that his grass green skin contrasted with the soft grey interior of the ship quite sharply.

Harry cancelled the spells he was wearing.

"What do you want?" the Vinvocci demanded, peeking out over a ripped-out and upturned seat.

"I don't know what you mean," Harry replied. He nonverbally Summoned all the weapons in the room onto a pile – there were surprisingly few – and Vanished them.

The Vinvocci stared at him, wide-eyed. He blinked repeatedly, as if trying to dispell an odd afterimage, and said with confidence that sounded ridiculous from someone crouching under a counter: "I thought it was a pretty simple question."

Harry shrugged. Leaning over some switches, he closely examined a readout that presumably reported on the installed devices. He couldn't understand _anything_. "…I wouldn't say no to some sugar-coated almonds?" he suggested absently. Maybe chocolate, too. Chocolate helped lift the mood, after all.

And did every single of his treacherous thoughts have to lead back to the Doctor?

"Is that a joke?" the Vinvocci asked, trembling.

"Is that a trick question?" Harry asked back. This was useless. He knew enough about computers to operate one, as long as the software was English, but this computer was extraterrestrial, and probably needed some serious hacking. He would have just blasted it, except that would probably crash the ship. He didn't want to kill the aliens – he just wanted them to have their deserved stay in prison.

Philosophy was such a poisonous can of worms. He didn't want to open it, if he didn't have to.

The Doctor probably felt the same way.

Damn.

"Answer me, human!" the Vinvocci exclaimed, shivering and panting in his hidey hole.

"What was your question, then?" Harry returned, disinterested.

"What do you want?" the Vinvocci desperately repeated his initial question.

Harry glared at him. "I want you to stop this countdown, before any of the people down on this planet-" He pointed at a screen that displayed a picture of the Earth. "-are murdered. Unless you can give me that, you're of no use to me."

"D-don't k-kill me!" the Vinvocci begged.

Harry sneered in disgust. Was that why people were so ready to kill others? Because they didn't know what death, or fear of death, was like? He wasn't a killer by choice, but by what he perceived as necessity. There was no force that could with certainty deem someone's death as necessary, but Harry did his best, and he could console himself with that.

He pointed his wand at the Vinvocci and Stunned him, too.

x

The Doctor yelped when someone seized his shoulders from behind.

It wasn't often that he was snuck upon, but whether it was the rapidly running out time, or his elation at finally having found a pressure suit, or simply the assaulter's skill, the sneaking upon was successful this time.

"Two things!" Harry said as he roughly spun the Doctor around. "First – you're a bloody self-righteous prig. Second – I've got a solution."

"So do I-"

"Mine's better," Harry cut in. "_But_ we've got eleven minutes to implement it, so I suggest we leg it."

There were times when the decision-making was much helped by the fact that the Doctor was a time-traveller, ergo he had been to the future, ergo he knew that there had been (would be) no major catastrophe striking the Earth today. Also, he knew that Harry would not die and if he himself did, he would regenerate from it.

He followed Harry through the manhole and down a maintenance shaft.

"Start talking!" he yelled downwards as they scaled a ladder.

"I've neutralised the whole crew," Harry said and, just as the Doctor's stomach clenched at the image of magical slaughter, the man added: "They're nice and unconscious and waiting to be transported to the surface."

Harry jumped off the third stave and ducked through another manhole into a Bruydac-sized corridor. The Doctor bit the inside of his cheek and hurried after him, feeling maybe a little guilty. It was difficult not to expect some kind of violent instinct from the person he was attracted to. After all, he had a nearly catastrophic history of caring for people who disappointed him.

He should have believed that Harry was different. Occasionally, the optimism he would have liked to feel failed him.

"You can transport them?" the Doctor asked, just to be sure, because the absence of the TARDIS remained in the forefront of his mind.

"Yup," Harry called from the mouth of the corridor. He opened a transparent panel for himself and the Doctor and entered the bridge.

The collective crew, counting fourteen members of eight different races were slumped on the floor, piled up and connected with a long string that looped around each individual's wrist (or pincer, in one case).

"I'll portkey them down. It's different form Apparition, but they should survive the trip, even through the vacuum and the atmosphere."

"_Should_?" the Doctor asked unhappily.

"Never been done before," Harry replied, shrugging. "But, hey, we survived the Apparition up here, and that's never been done before either."

The Doctor wondered if this was how his companions saw him. It wasn't very flattering.

"Anyway," Harry continued – disturbingly, it was a lot like looking into a mirror – grabbing a personal reader from one of the consoles and waving it, "you need to look at this and find where they've put the devices, so someone can go and get them later on. Torchwood. Or UNIT. I don't give a damn. But we can't just leave them lying around-"

"Gimme!" the Doctor demanded. He snatched the reader out of Harry's hand. It was a lot of information. Rather than waste time reading and memorising it now, he pulled out his trusty sonic screwdriver and downloaded it.

"Then, we need to blow up this ship before the signal is sent. Which would be-" He glanced over at the decipherable numbers on one screen. "-in seven and half minutes, roughly. Ideas?"

"They've gutted the engineering and put in Malmooth engines. They are very environmentally conscious." The Doctor felt that this should be emphasised, since every good thing about the motley group of the interplanetary cousin of Earth Liberation Front might count in securing them lighter punishments.

"Conclusion?" Harry prompted.

"If we destroy the cooling, it will overheat and explode," the Doctor explained.

"Time horizon?"

"Two and half minutes. More likely three."

Harry nodded and muttered a chant while pointing his wand at the string binding together his captives. The pile of extraterrestrials vanished.

Harry spun and grabbed the Doctor's arm. "Lead the way."

The Doctor couldn't quite suppress a grin. "Run!"

x

"By the way," Harry said as they jogged down another of the endless corridors, hoping that the Doctor knew where they were going, because he was already completely lost, and mentally laughing at the inanity of his comment, "my favourite spot in Little Whinging was the swings."

"What?" the Doctor exclaimed, pointing his buzzing screwdriver with the blue-lit tip at a locked manhole.

"I thought I'd offer a non sequitur, too?" Harry paused and leaned against a plain wall panel. He wasn't out of breath yet – these days it took more exertion to wind him – but he didn't mind a few seconds of rest.

The Doctor scowled at the lock he was fighting, and pressed out: "Oh, non sequitur is an art – you cannot do such a hack job of it! In fact, non sequitur is as much an art as segue-"

Harry grabbed his shoulder, wrenched him out of the way, and pointed his wand at the unyielding lock. "_Reducto_!"

"Oh," the Doctor said as the metal groaned and the passage opened for them. "Good aim." He climbed through, careful of the splintered, charred pieces of steel (or whatever the ship was made of). "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Harry replied as they hurried down another corridor. How big was the ship exactly?

"Little Whinging?" the Doctor repeated, sounding as pensive as one could while running and stumbling over unattached cables. "Really? _Whinging_? And _Little_? Must be in Britain…"

"_Reducto_!" Harry opened the block on the other end of the corridor.

They entered a room that was positively cavernous compared to the rest of the ship. Also, it was literally freezing in there.

Harry promptly renewed their Warming Charms.

The Doctor raised the screwdriver above his head and started buzzing everything in sight, looking like a deranged will-o'-the-wisp flitting through the darkened room. Then lights clicked on, flooding the space with soft illumination other than the bit coming in through the open manhole. Most of the artificial cavern was filled with a huge cylinder that thrummed – or, more likely, roared, but mostly below the audibility threshold.

"Oh!" the Doctor shouted. There was, strangely, no echo. "We have to destroy one of these pumps." He pointed out what looked like decorative girders. They were centrally symmetric, leading from the walls to the cylinder in regular intervals.

"Which one?" Harry asked.

"Doesn't matter at all," the Doctor said. He activated the screwdriver again, and let its blue light dance over the girders. "Eeny meeny miney-"

"_Reducto_!" Harry cast.

"That's not how it goes!" the Doctor complained.

There was a crash. The third girder on the right from them, the one at which the Doctor was pointing, was blown out. A coolant started chugging out of the open end of a pipe, and Harry hastily cast Bubble-head Charms at himself and the Doctor. He liked to think that the Doctor wouldn't have forgotten to point out that the stuff was toxic if it was, but better safe than sorry.

For a good measure, Harry destroyed two more pumps. He offered his arm – this time he was confident that they would survive the Apparition even without extensive bodily contact – but the Doctor remained standing beneath the towering cylinder behind which the engine was hidden, staring.

"We should-"

"_Shh_," the Doctor shushed him. "I'm counting."

Harry doubtfully looked at the leaking pumps, at the rapidly spreading pool of coolant on the floor, at the sparks where an open circuit shorted out, and then at the cylinder in front of him which was – hopefully – rapidly growing hotter until it would explode. The most profound thing to say that occurred to him was: "Uh – what about the radiation?"

"Right," the Doctor, much to Harry's surprise, agreed. "We should get a move on. Radiation poisoning. Bad way to die." He reached for Harry's arm.

Harry Apparated.

x

"Why here?" the Doctor whinged, pouting and ostentatiously scowling at the red-beretted young men and women saluting him.

"Because this is where I sent the captives," Harry replied with over-exaggerated patience, as if he were talking to a five year old.

The Doctor pouted more intensely, until a UNIT Major led the saluting crowd away so as to please their visitors.

"This doesn't disconcert you?" the Doctor asked, glaring at every motion that might have led to a salute.

Harry didn't see how he was the weird one in this situation. "It's not like I am seeing them for the first time," he said. Well, they were possibly seeing him for the first time, but he was in the company of the Doctor, and as far as he had heard (gossip spread everywhere, even in the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) being with the Doctor amounted to instant security clearance. Score.

"Oh yes. You _were_ at the UNIT base before," the Doctor mused, grin dangerously growing. "Have you ever met Martha?"

Harry shook his head, now becoming more nervous as the vestibule emptied with the exception of heavily armed posted guards. "No. Not that I remember."

He remembered Harmony Waters, a UNIT Major, even though that probably wasn't her real name. Also, there had been – would be – a Lieutenant Doumeki. But that was still a century and half away, and right now there were different officers, and his memory really wasn't that perfect. He recalled a couple of people he had personally met at the scenes of fights, but that would be later, after he would have abandoned his family.

"Pity," the Doctor quipped. "She would have a _heart attack_."

He really was asking for it. "Then I suppose it's a good thing I never met her?"

The Doctor stopped bouncing and stared at Harry, slack-jawed. "Are you being, in a strange and suspicious switch of characteristics, literal?"

Harry didn't think he overused metaphors that much, but the Doctor seemed to think that he should. Or maybe that he would in the future. And that the Doctor himself wouldn't… "You were using a hyperbole, which is a sort of a metaphor," Harry pointed out. "I think. I'm not a linguist. Anyway, I thought it was expected of me." If nothing else, it was fitting.

The Doctor would have probably retorted something biting and witty, but then a dark-skinned woman in a white coat came up to meet them. She was quite pretty, Harry thought – all big brown eyes and an easy smile – except that she was looking at the Doctor as if she was seeing the sunrise for the first time in her life.

"Hello," the Doctor said. "I'm the Doctor. Who are you?"

The woman offered her hand. "Leticia Smith, Doctor, a geology and seismology expert. It's an honour to meet you – and your companion?"

"Go on, introduce yourself," the Doctor said, gently shoving Harry forwards.

"Harry Potter," Harry said, shaking the woman's hand. There went his nice anonymity, together with the lack of staring and/or snickers. "Nice to meet you, Miss Smith."

"Likewise, Mr Potter." She unsuccessfully tried to hide a chuckle behind her hand. "I'm sorry; it's just such a _literary_ name. My grandmother _adored_ the story." She quickly pulled herself together and, mostly serene, smiled at the Doctor. "General Folchart wants to speak with you, Doctor. I'll keep an eye on Mr Potter in the meantime."

So, she was Harry's guard. At least she was nice about it. And pretty. And so far thought that Harry's name was a funny coincidence, or maybe that his parents had been fans. Why had he not thought to change his name in the books? Oh, damn it, one would have thought that at sixty-something he wouldn't have been quite that young and stupid anymore.

"Harry?" the Doctor asked.

It wasn't like Harry minded much, unless someone was going to shoot at him, or hit him over the head, or inject him with something. "Don't wander off?" he asked.

"Cross my hearts," the Doctor replied, grinning not as freely as before.

"See you," Harry said, moving away from Miss Smith, just in case.

She set out toward the lift, but before she reached it, she turned back to the Doctor (who obviously knew where he was supposed to go).

"Oh, and Doctor?" she said. "My grandmother asked me to tell you that you are a _barmy old codger_, and that she hopes you choke on a _Puking Pastille_."

Harry choked. That was – straight out of _the_ book. Dumbledore's description of himself as relayed by Dobby. Applied to the Doctor. Damnably fitting.

"What?" the Doctor yelped. "Why?"

"For not picking up your phone," Miss Smith replied with perceptible reproach.

The lift door opened with a ding.

"But… Martha?" the Doctor said. "Where is she?"

Miss Smith shook her head. "I don't think visiting her grave is going to make much difference," she said sharply, and gestured Harry to precede her. "Get in, please, Mr Potter."

Harry obediently let himself be led through the building. He tried to remember the way. It wasn't very hard, because the layout of the building was very similar to every other UNIT base, and it was designed to be well-arranged, easily negotiable, and yet more easily defensible. Miss Smith took Harry to a room that for all intents and purposes seemed to be a geology laboratory, packed with a multitude of various machines that Harry stayed well away from, because they were obviously expensive and he was too magical to mix well with most Earthian technology.

He had found, to his mild surprise, that some kinds of alien technology were more resistant to him (for example, he would have bet that the Doctor's screwdriver wouldn't have reacted to him).

"Have you known the Doctor for a long time?" Miss Jones asked, tacitly offering Harry a seat on one of the armchairs surrounding a low table laden with paperwork.

Harry sat. It wasn't comfortable, but he had been running around and didn't protest the chance to rest his feet.

"Some days it seems longer than it has been," he non-answered the first real question she posed to him.

Miss Smith smiled, took a seat opposite him, and passed him a paper printout with some satellite pictures. It was barely more intelligible to him than the data he had found on the alien ship.

"I am curious," she said. "Has he taken you to other planets, like he took my grandmother? What is the rest of the universe like?"

Harry blinked and replied with another non-answer.

Miss Smith briefly frowned, and then realised that he wasn't going to be easy prey for her information-hungry superiors.

They talked for more than an hour. It was, of course, an interrogation, but Miss Smith was so nice about it that Harry didn't mind that much. In fact, had he not had copious amount of experience with warfare and law enforcement, he might not have noticed he was being interrogated.

"So they're – what? Extraterrestrial eco-terrorists?" Miss Jones asked, laughing again. She laughed a lot, and smiled, too, all too aware that she had the gift of putting people around her at ease.

"Basically," Harry allowed.

"That is new," she professed. "You would think, in a field like _geology_, it would be the same thing over and over… But some days, the Earth is on the brink of destruction and I get one of the front seats." She managed to portray the right amount of awe and enthusiasm, but Harry recognised an actress.

She didn't exactly look as if she had just taken off the uniform and grabbed the nearest civilian clothes for disguise, but her posture and the calluses on her hands were legacy of a different life than that of a scientist. She might have studied geology and seismology – and it would have made sense to put her on this case if she had – but it was more likely just a handy excuse to explain her presence.

"You don't look like you've been very worried," Harry pointed out.

Miss Smith laughed again. "I grew up hearing stories about him, you know? _The Doctor_. He was this mythical hero. When I was really small, I imagined him like Brad Pitt in Troy, so handsome and strong and tragic… I suppose, the bottom line is that I always believed in him. So no, I wasn't worried."

That sounded like she was telling the truth. It was a believable story. If her grandmother had been the Doctor's companion _and_ a fan of the Harry Potter books, it explained a whole lot.

"Do you not believe in anything?" she asked.

A very personal question, Harry mused, and probably posed out of genuine interest as much as because she had been ordered to ask.

"You mean like, believe in myself? Or believe in a higher being? Or fate?" Harry counter-questioned.

"Yes, any of those," Miss Smith replied, leaning back in her chair and surveying Harry, maybe trying to figure out if he resembled the literary hero intentionally or if it was an accident. "What is your faith, Mr Potter?"

"Faith…?" Harry shrugged. He had never been much of a believer. He had, a very, very long time ago, trusted Dumbledore. He had learned his lesson. Since then he put faith mostly in objectives, not into anything tangible. "You could say I believe in technology," he allowed eventually.

"Technology is science," Miss Smith argued.

"So is magic. So is the Bad Wolf – arguably," Harry pointed out.

Judging by her expression, Miss Smith didn't know what he was talking about. She would be inclined to accept magic – the Doctor thought so, and even though Harry wasn't ready to put his faith into the Doctor, his way of knowing was uncanny – but she wasn't aware of it yet. She also didn't know about the Bad Wolf. Come to think of it, how did Harry know about the Bad Wolf?

Hmm… maybe it had been Delta Chant, who had mentioned it to him. A long time ago. Well… perhaps around this time, actually.

"But we know how science works!" Miss Smith protested.

"No," Harry refuted. "_You_ know how it works. I see a levitating Dalek and know it's not magic keeping it in the air, so I _believe_ it is technology."

Miss Smith shook her head in exasperation. "Your worldview is completely upside down."

x

The Doctor hoped that Harry had survived the last hour in better shape than the Doctor had survived the meeting with General Folchart. Folchart was very young for a UNIT General, appeared to be more German than anything else, and was also an alien. Relatively alien. Genetically he was human, but he wasn't from Earth. Probably from one of the colonies, and he got somehow stranded out of his time.

The Doctor had considered offering him a lift, but the TARDIS wasn't speaking to him at the moment (he wasn't surprised – he had really gone very overboard with the Time Lord Victorious episode) and Folchart seemed happy where he was.

He had been asked about Mars, of course. He had said the bare minimum – no need to pour salt into his own wounds, and the UNIT people knew that they wouldn't get more out of him than what he offered freely – but he respected that they had a reason to be edgy. Two foiled attacks on the Earth in two days. That was – well, no, it wasn't a record. Still, it was a bit extreme.

Finding Harry wasn't much of a trial either, since Folchart's aide had been kind enough to provide directions; the Doctor didn't even need to ask. There went one of his excuses to forget that he was supposed to find Harry. Up until the moment when the aide opened his mouth and informed the Doctor where he would find Harry and that he was welcome to get him – and would he like someone to accompany him there? – the Doctor hadn't even considered whether he would keep his promise to Harry or not. His automatic reaction would have been to run away. After all, he lied routinely. He was a routine liar.

Now, armed with information, he stopped by a window and looked out into the yard. He couldn't have guessed whether they were in Britain, in the USA, in Canada or Brasilia or Poland or Australia just by looking outside. The UNIT had become worryingly uniform. Still, his senses couldn't be confused so easily, and he felt the North and South pole, felt the movement of the planet, of its single natural satellite, of the entire solar system rushing, hurtling through the galaxy that spun within the universe-

"Hello again," he said, standing in the doorway of the geology laboratory. There was, _surprise, surprise_, no layer of dust covering everything.

Harry gave him a thin smile. The Doctor decided to be proud of himself for, this time, keeping his word. Harry was different from his other human friends in that he didn't see the Doctor as superhuman. Different, yes. Smarter, if he had to admit it. But never superior, and never human.

The Doctor was attracted to that, he couldn't deny it. He was attracted to the mystery that was the inclusion of Harry Potter in his life, perhaps even more than he was fascinated by the mystery of River Song. If not going back on his promises was what it took to figure out Harry, then the Doctor was willing to make the experiment.

"Finished with the bigwigs?" Leticia asked.

Harry stood up, indicating that he was more than ready to leave. He didn't look too harassed, so he either had not noticed that he had been interrogated or (more likely) knew how to deal with a situation like this. It wasn't so bad at this time, but in a few hundred years the UNIT would practically be made of red tape.

"Thank you for entertaining my friend in the meantime," the Doctor said, grinning at her.

Harry scoffed. He briefly met the Doctor's eyes, and the mental balance of the scene shifted from the Doctor intruding upon Harry and Leticia to Leticia intruding upon Harry and the Doctor.

"I was happy to do so," Leticia said obligingly. "Mr Potter is delightful company."

Harry glanced ozone-layer-wards as if to point out that she could finally stop with the over-the-top friendliness before she became downright obsequious, but instead he said: "Thank you, Miss Smith. Excuse me, please."

He snuck past the young woman faster than she could catch him, and just as she was opening her mouth to say something to halt them, the Doctor called out: "Say hi from me to Martha!" pretending that he had in the meantime forgotten that she was dead.

Harry hurried down a hallway, keeping up with the Doctor.

The Doctor forbade himself grief. Everyone died, one day or another. He hated it when he left his companions or they left him, but Martha had been gone a long time ago, and anyway, if he wanted to see her, he only had to hop a few years back.

"I can Apparate us where we're going," Harry offered as they descended a staircase (the Doctor much preferred staircases to lifts, if for nothing else then because it was too damn hard to run in a lift).

"Waste of magic," the Doctor replied. "They're keeping the TARDIS in the basement. I need to talk to her." He hoped that the TARDIS' anger had run its course, and if he appeared to be contrite and regretful of his actions, she would welcome him back. Not that he regretted what he had done – he had saved Mia and Yuri – but he admitted that he shouldn't have gotten carried away.

He mentally thanked Adelaide Brooke to saving the continuum from his whim.

"TARDIS?" Harry repeated quizzically.

"I'll explain later," the Doctor replied. The basement lock gave away to his sonic, and then he – and Harry – stood at the doorstep of a huge underground garage cum hangar cum junk yard, full of cars, hovercrafts, planes, ships, spaceships and pretty much everything in between. Some were totalled, others were being taken apart, and a few stood proud, waiting for such a time when the UNIT would find use for them.

The TARDIS would be completely out of place among them.

"You found out it would be here how?" Harry inquired, staring at a rustic Sontaran hoverboat. "The secret art of asking?"

The Doctor adopted his best injured expression, even though he was feeling a bit petulant. Harry had guessed disconcertingly close. Still, he had a replica for this situation, and it was so woefully underused that he couldn't let the opportunity escape. "I thought it was time to resurrect my own, very special technique that I had not used for quite some time."

"Which is?" Harry obediently asked, making it more than obvious that he was just humouring the Doctor.

It was, therefore, disappointing, that the Doctor had to concede this round to Harry by admitting: "Keeping my eyes open and my mouth shut."

"Oh. I see how your verbal diarrhea would conflict with that," Harry said, consolingly patting the Doctor's hand.

"You're mean," the Doctor replied.

What he thought, however, was that he had been both right and wrong in his previous assessments of Harry. Right in that Harry was nice, interesting, had a sense of humour compatible with the Doctor's, and he was a delight to argue with. He had been wrong in thinking that Harry was too soft to survive the cruelty of the universe, that he acted irresponsibly toward causality, that he was smarter than the Doctor and that he could – with proper care – be avoided.

He also distinctly remembered that Harry Potter had looked like a seventeen-year-old.

He decided that the TARDIS could have another minute to reconsider before they went to find her, and turned his full attention to Harry. "Can I see your real face now?"

Harry stiffened. He took a deep breath and purposely released the tension in his shoulders. Then he waved his wand. He didn't say anything, but the Doctor could hear a quiet crackle of electricity and knew that any surveillance within the room had been disabled. There were no people; guards stood outside the glorified parking lot, but the inside was supposed to have been safe, rife with security cameras as it was.

Harry stood with his back against a future Earthian hovercraft – most likely a bit of the debris that had come through the Rift in Cardiff after Jack had abandoned Torchwood Three – and he made a series of gestures. It was as if his face flaked and then burst outwards in an explosion of multicoloured sparkles. What remained was more or less the same face, only this time the lines that came with age were gone, the skin pale and almost smooth, stretched a little too thinly over cheekbones that weren't originally meant to be quite that prominent.

The man seemed to shrink, gaining a boyish stature, complete with narrow shoulders and a bulging Adam's apple. Harry's eyes remained green, shielded behind circular spectacles, but his hair gained a bit of colour back – the Doctor had, of course, noticed the occasional grey hair in Harry's haphazard coiffure, but it hadn't seemed quite as obvious as it was in contrast to a full head of universe-black hair.

"It's quite handsome," the Doctor said in reference to Harry's seventeen-year-old visage. "Why the pretence?"

"Can you imagine how hard it is to make people take me seriously when I look like a teenager?" Harry replied, shrugging those thin shoulders, looking the very picture of a petulant adolescent, when the Doctor knew him to be in fact several times as old and wise enough to keep pace with the Doctor himself.

"You got stuck like that?" the Doctor guessed. Yes, this Harry was the same Harry as the one that had appeared in the TARDIS at Thoros Beta in the year twenty twenty-five and turned a few of the Doctor's reality-simplifying beliefs on their respective heads.

The physical changelessness reminded the Doctor uncomfortably of Jack, but Harry's cause for remaining in a stasis-like state was indisputably different form Jack's. He felt… essential. A part of the giant machine that was the multiverse, where the impulses made the elementary particles made the hadrons made the atoms made the molecules and minerals and further up the evolution path also tissues, and of them organs and organisms and self-awareness and intelligence and civilisation and… _affection_, as Harry had once diplomatically worded it.

"Seems like it," Harry replied, and the Doctor winced at how banal the response sounded compared to his all-encompassing train of thought, but that was his fault for thinking big, not Harry's for replying so very honestly that he just didn't know.

One of the things the Doctor respected most was not knowing.

Not knowing – like Socrates had once clumsily tried to explain – was the most important aspect of having something, _anything_ to live for. The poor fellow had had too much hemlock and didn't get the chance to realise just how far into the future of the humankind he had seen, past all the hedonism and religion and floccinaucinihilipilifistic 'forty-two' that his fellow philosophers had guessed to be the Reason.

Harry, self-consciously curled upon himself, said: "A friend of mine _strongly suggested_ that I should alter my appearance with spells to mimic aging. It worked for a while. In twenty oh-eight I had enough clout to delay informing the Prime Minister of some state secrets until he had shown himself to be a psychopathic megalomaniac. The Minister for Magic was just going to tell the bastard everything. The collective wizarding society has the self-preservation of a lobotomised pixie."

The Doctor banished the picture of what the Master armed with genuine magic would be like. It would have been very bad, because the Master was even more of a megalomaniac than the Doctor himself, and that was saying a lot, because Time Lords had compulsory megalomania encoded in their genetic information.

The Doctor knew chillingly well how power seduced. He had been ready to forsake the name he had proudly carried for centuries for something banal like 'Victorious.' The Master, whose self-control hadn't been half as good as the Doctor's, would have jumped at the chance to become 'Wizard' or 'Warlock' or 'Magician.' The Earth would have been gone and forgotten so fast that the other species wouldn't even notice that something was missing, and then those other species would follow. He would seize the TARDIS and destroy it, since it would have become obsolete to him. He would unlock the Time Lock, release Gallifrey, release the army of Daleks and they would destroy _everything_.

"That would be why they have you as a protector," the Doctor said softly, aware that nothing he could put in words would encompass the scope of the catastrophe Harry had unknowingly prevented.

"It gets old. Fast." A momentary telepathic connection conveyed the exhaustion of years upon years of mindless guarding under Harry's belt, and how thoroughly sick of it he was. "I'm off this planet as soon as I decide where I'm going."

And that was the Doctor's clue to recall that he was eager to get off the planet as well, to find a place that wouldn't demand saving quite as often as the Earth did (he understood Harry's exhaustion to a point that evaded verbal description) or at least one that would offer a warm supper and a soft bed. Earth wasn't really the most hospitable planet around.

The TARDIS was standing next to a concrete pillar, in between two alien vessels – one geared toward crew that was about two inches tall in stature, the other a one-man fighter with one of the engines missing.

"At least they've put her close to the exit," the Doctor muttered.

"It looks like a Police Box?" Harry inquired, after he had realised that the Doctor was talking about a vessel, and which vessel in particular. Then he slapped his forehead with his palm. "Of course it looks like a police box."

"How is a TARDIS looking like a police box expectable?" the Doctor exclaimed. He had thought it was rather charmingly eccentric. Expectability would be akin to a rain on his parade.

"Never mind," Harry muttered disappointingly.

They stopped in front of the TARDIS door, which sprang open upon the Doctor's touch to it, and Harry – somewhat assuaging the Doctor's sense of individuality – curiously glanced over the Doctor's shoulder too see the insides. He made no comment on the difference in dimensions, but the Doctor had not really expected him to. In fact, had Harry conformed in wondering over why the TARDIS was 'bigger on the inside,' the Doctor would have been disappointed.

They glanced at each other, and then away. Harry pretended to be examining the alien vessels on display; the Doctor engaged in a brief communication with the TARDIS, during which he learned that he wasn't forgiven yet, but well on the way, and the TARDIS was willing to welcome him back if he promised to be good and keep his head down – as much as he ever managed to keep his head down.

The Doctor knew that the best way of culling his more megalomaniac impulses was begetting a human companion.

Harry was… there.

"You want to…?" the Doctor asked, gesturing toward the insides of the TARDIS.

"No," Harry replied, vigorously shaking his head, inadvertently making the Doctor like him yet a bit more against his will. "I think I have my own way of travelling. If you don't hear of me again, I'm so much space dust-"

"No," the Doctor cut in, scaring himself with how much that option was just plain unacceptable to him. "No, I have met you before. Well, later for you," he explained.

Harry's smile, if marred by his apparently eternal youth, was downright beatific. "Good. Means I'll get it right."

"Yes," the Doctor said.

"Yes," Harry said.

There was a brief silence, and then the Doctor laughed at how very awkward they were being. "Oh, go, Harry!" he crowed. "Go and discover the universe! Laugh at its sense of humour and fall into its pitfalls and meet many, many brilliant people, so we can compare notes-"

Harry leaned in and kissed him.

It was a short contact, timid almost, never mind that Harry must have known that the Doctor was on the verge of initiating the same, and that they definitely both wanted more. Harry, obviously, was bitingly conscious of the lack of mutual knowledge, despite the sympathy so easily fostered between them. The kiss – a funny word, 'kiss,' full of sibilants that were at best undeserved – was momentary and shallow and soft and ripe with promise of future passion.

They separated swiftly, and returned to their pre-kiss awkward stances, keeping to their respective personal spaces.

Harry bit his lower lip.

The Doctor shrugged, extended a hand to touch the doorframe of the TARDIS, and said: "We'll probably always be all twisty-and-turny in time-space, but the first meeting should be on equal grounds… _n'est-ce pas_?"

"Absolutely," Harry agreed, smiling again.

The Doctor aimed both his forefingers at Harry and inclined his head, expression as expectant as he could make it. "Car'Antares, day after Kakumei."

Harry nodded. "I'll write it down, just in case," he promised. "It's a date."

x

_355,814 Earthtime, Car'Antares_

x

The bar – although bar was a very loose description – was as bright as he had expected it to be. Everything glowed, glittered and glinted enough to blind a man. The Antaresians sure liked their overillumination.

Fortunately, within a minute Jack's eyes adjusted. This was a specifically alien-friendly establishment, otherwise humans would have had to wear sunglasses or risk blindness.

He looked around, checked out the anthropoids (he was in the mood for something traditional today) and found several prospects, moth male and female and indeterminable. He was about to move over to the shaded table in the back to try and chat up a Cat, when he noticed the figure that sat at the bar.

The man – boy, by his looks – appeared to be fully human. He was small for a human, almost child-like, with messy dark hair that reflected the refracted light in an improbable halo of all visible colours. Jack observed the motion of slender limbs dressed in clothes that were out of a different millennium, sparse and sexy. Still, none of that registered as vividly as a shadow of a recollection of a memory.

Jack tried to remember. His first few hundred years had left a strong emotional impression, but ever since then he only retained the most traumatising or relatively recent memories. That he even recognised this person was incredible. He couldn't recall a name, but the assignation 'miracle-boy' resonated.

Something about one of Jack's lovers during that time. There was an association of a stopwatch. And a pterodactyl, strangely enough. The man had died. Of course he had died. Most of Jack's partners had.

Miracle-boy, however, had done something very bad to Jack. He couldn't think of the exact circumstance anymore, but it had been a downright criminal act, and it had isolated Jack from the people around him at the time. What, though… something breaking the Laws. Hence 'miracle-boy.' Jack wondered where he had left his journals from that time. They might have been destroyed when Epsilon Vega collapsed and the resulting meteor shower demolished the Earth colony – whichever one it had been.

"It _is_ you, miracle-boy," Jack said, getting a close-up of the face as he situated himself on the barstool smack-dab next to the young human. He turned to the bartender. "A Starlight Sonata for me, and for my acquaintance another of whatever he's drinking."

"Do I know you?" the miracle-boy asked, unattractively tartly.

"I should think so," Jack replied. He rested his elbows on the counter, accepted his mixed drink, complete with a flamboyant piece of fruit and a straw that was one of the universally present tropes. Jack made a show of passing a ball of transparent liquid to the miracle-boy while he said: "I didn't peg you as the kind of man who tortures someone and then forgets about it."

The boy scowled at him and moved as far away as he could without vacating his seat. "Now I know you've mistaken me for someone. I've tortured exactly five people in my life and you weren't one of them."

The bartender on the other side of the counter giggled. Jack didn't think it was funny. He hadn't thought torture was funny since his days at the Boe peninsula, and lost his appetite for it entirely after Emily Holroyd and Alice Guppy had gotten their paws on him.

"Besides, you're being kind of friendly for a victim with a grudge," the miracle-boy professed. "Stockholm syndrome?"

Jack snorted. He had loved very few people in his long, long and – had he mentioned long? – fruitful life. Most of them had betrayed and hurt him… before he had fallen in love with them. Maybe the miracle-boy wasn't so far from the truth with his assumption, but Jack was very certain that neither betrayal nor any arbitrary hurt were the reason why his subconscious raised an alarm when he had spotted the guy.

"Not on your life, lovely," Jack said, sipping the Sonata. "Let me guess. You time-travel."

The boy shrugged. "Sporadically. Not enough to mention."

He was lying. It was difficult to tell, but Jack was almost sure. And he had to give it to the miracle-boy, because as an ex-conman who had lived for millennia, it was next to impossible to lie to him without him knowing.

"Apparently enough to go back and meet me," he returned, cutting through the bullshit.

"There are not many people vying for my attention quite so pertinaciously in this corner of the galaxy, Mister…?"

"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack said. He had used different names before and since, but this was the one he gave to people who mattered. Maybe because it was one of the few names he used that mattered.

"Oh, right," the boy said with a mockery of realisation. "The stripes."

The joke gave Jack a pause. It was based on a very specific culture that had existed on Earth _before_ the First Bountiful Human Empire, back in the days of Torchwood. He remembered Torchwood. It had been a bad time, but fulfilling. He missed feeling needed. Important.

The boy could be a Time Agent.

"Have you ever met the Doctor?" Jack inquired, wondering how come he could already see the bottom of the glass, and why did the idiots give him the Sonata in a glass instead of a much more practical gravityball.

"What's it to you, _Captain_?" the boy asked archly.

Jack shrugged, doing his best nonchalant impression. "I travelled with him for a while. I thought, if it turns out we had a common acquaintance-"

"I might let you into my pants?"

"Or skirt, as seems to be the case," Jack agreed, and pointed out, complete with a gesture: "I've bought you a drink."

"Thank you, Captain," the boy replied with a grace of a centenarian.

Jack blinked. "Wait… that's it?"

"I thought that was polite."

"It's not really etiquette I'm interested in," Jack protested. He gestured for another Sonata and gave back the stupid, archaic glass.

"I could tell," the boy next to him dryly muttered into his ball of drink, before he looked up. "You've got the smile, Captain Harkness. You've got the looks and the moves and the words. But you don't want me. If you hadn't recognised me, you wouldn't have come over here-"

"You're wrong," Jack cut in. "You are beautiful."

And he was. Not classically beautiful – he was much too thin and pale and edgy for that, with too much scarring, and the proportions of his body were generally not quite right, but Jack's idea of sexual appeal wasn't limited by any conventional standards.

"Thank you," the miracle-boy said, giving no room to interpretation.

"I really don't have a chance?" Jack asked. He couldn't tell if he was disappointed or relieved. He had had to try, either way. This person was not someone who could be by-passed.

"Doesn't happen often to you, does it?"

"That's twice too often now," Jack said self-deprecatingly.

The boy shrugged. "You'll live."

Jack shook his head and made his way to a free table by the wall, muttering: "You have no idea."

Jack wouldn't normally give up that easily, but what little he knew of the person the miracle-boy would become put him on guard. For once it didn't really matter that he couldn't die; it was smart not to anger the future god-like being… even if the being was being too sexy for their own good. Most who appeared in public with this kind of natural, non-pheromone-induced magnetism, ended up raped and murdered in an air-vent shaft before the dawn – but then, Jack doubted there was actually anything that could touch the miracle-boy without his invitation.

Jack had major troubles just shaking off the vision of burying his hands in that wild mass of black hair, watching the coy green eyes widen in pleasure… the casual coolness and air of effortless power around him made Jack ache for this version of the miracle-boy.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack noticed a tall, thin man in a navy blue suit. It was an ingrained reflex of his: whenever he spotted a suit, a bowtie, a cravat, anything in any way resembling the later incarnations of the Doctor, the ones who might recognise him, he had to sit up and make sure-

"Is the chair free?" A local girl with her bothria provocatively twined around her middle practically covered Jack in a cloud of pollen-like aphrodisiac.

Jack absently nodded, craning his neck. He had stopped physiologically reacting to common drugs targeted for humans when he had been around fourteen thousand.

He surveyed the room and found the man in the suit again. Like thousand times before, he took a deep breath – and choked on it when the man turned. It _was_ the Doctor.

x

The Doctor spun in a circle twice, attracting some limited attention from the other patrons. Car'Antares was one of the inexplicable places that had simply evolved into beauty. There was nothing particularly peaceful or refined about the Antaresians – certainly not compared to many other species – but they had that genetic predisposition towards creating beauty without being noticeably invested in it.

Whilst most of the post-Kakumei celebrations were still going on in the streets and plazas and palaces and baths and especially on the beaches, the catering establishments weren't half as crowded as he had feared they would be. Full of light, light music and light fun, that was this chamber. Made exotic by the dome ceiling of glass with tens of thousands of facets that made for an optical explosion in all colours of the rainbow and a few more if they were visible to the observer, the club was full of those wealthy enough to afford the exorbitant prices yet not all that gung-ho about the recent political changes.

Most of the clientele were off-worlders.

After the second spin the Doctor zoomed in on Harry.

The boy – if the label was even applicable, but if a bird looked like a sparrow, the Doctor was liable to call it a sparrow – was sitting at the bar, cradling a ball of liquid in his palm, taking occasional sips. There was nothing at all about him that might have suggested his origins. He was wearing a leather miniskirt that would have been more than scandalous on Earth even today, and a bolero with long, wide, see-through sleeves for _propriety's_ sake.

The Doctor paused briefly by the jukeball and with some surreptitious jiggery-pokery and judicious use of a sonic screwdriver added a song (that wasn't actually on the available list) into the queue.

Harry turned on the barstool. His eyes were just as poisonous as the Doctor remembered them. The radiant smile didn't detract from the air of casual danger he wore in the woeful deficiency of reasonable clothing.

"Did you know there's two thousand and seven human-friendly establishments just on the Northern hemisphere of this planet?" the Doctor asked.

"And I bet this was the first one you walked into," Harry returned.

Of course it had been the first one.

The Doctor snatched an untouched ball of liquid from where it hovered above the counter in front of Harry and sniffed it. It was sparkling water. The minerals were somewhat unusual, but still within the limits. "You were awfully certain that I would be here."

"That was a fellow patron's attempt to court my favour," Harry replied. "Needless to say, I informed them that I was otherwise entangled tonight."

"You are awfully certain of the entanglement," the Doctor returned, keeping the even, mildly curious tone just to see how Harry would react, and offered his hand.

"Not certain. Hopeful." Harry accepted the hand and let himself be tugged out of the seat and onto the dance floor. The song the Doctor had installed tuned in a second later, and Harry's poisonous eyes widened in appreciation.

…were you looking for somewhere to be? Or looking for someone to do?

"How did you know?" Harry breathed, one hand resting in the Doctor's palm, the other falling easily onto the Doctor's right shoulder. After a few steps they found a rhythm and continued to move together easily.

A few of the other dancers tried to copy their movements. It was a very old song in a very old style of music. Most of the instruments weren't even known anymore.

"You fit in here," the Doctor commented, looking over Harry's head at the scenery. "More than you ever fit in on Earth."

Harry spun under his arm and deliberately missed a step. The Doctor allowed the request and caught his dancing partner against his chest.

Harry grinned up at him. "Car'Antares has all the freedom of the sixth millennium and none of the fear. What's not to like?"

…our best made plans...

The Doctor grinned back. "What's not to like?" he repeated.

"Flatterer." Harry pulled away, stood upright, and nudged the Doctor back into dance. It was a very odd moment and, seeing as this was the Doctor's thought, that was saying something. They shared a brief mutual mental transference.

-this man, curious brown eyes, this man with warm, long-fingered hands, so tall and nauseatingly active in every instance, was going to be Harry's lover… always thought it would be a such a daunting moment, but for refusing the inevitability he's so easy-going about it-

-old young sparrow creating his own little vortices in the Vortex, always here, in the back of the mind, in that place where not checking was the best idea because abandon hope ye who enter here – seemed like there should be something more complicated, more satisfying than simple metagravitation pulling us together to this place, that's just lame-

"You're like last time. Different from how I remember you from before," Harry said, threading his fingers through the Doctor's hair.

…_don't leave me here to pass through time, without a map or road-sign…_

"Good different or bad different?" the Doctor asked, sadly recalling Rose's hesitant 'just… different' – but it must have been a gargantuan shock for her, and 'just different' was heaps better than 'bad different'… or even than 'good different,' because that would have meant that his previous self had been the 'bad different' and… well, Rose had tried so hard to be diplomatic.

Harry was, probably, too old for denying that he had an opinion.

…lying on ice you will be before the day is over, so case in point may be that you never thought it through…

x

…_but it seems they've lost their powers, now all I'm left with is the hours._

"I'm biased," Harry said. "The memory of you alternately frightened and excited me throughout my youth. You can imagine the resulting weirdness – wet nightmares."

…_don't leave me here, my guiding light, cause I, I wouldn't know where to begin…_

The Doctor scrunched up his nose. "Don't tell me what I'll have done to you. I don't want to know."

A little breathless from the dance and from being held in the hands that had stitched together gaping wounds of the universe, Harry pulled the Doctor to the bar and ordered clean water for them to share. The Doctor seemed a little displeased, like he was used to these things happening around him but not the being involved in them personally.

Harry moved closer, pressing his back to the Doctor's chest in a silent request for embrace.

He received it, too.

"How old are you?" the Doctor asked. His arm was warm around Harry's stomach, and Harry could feel the flutter of twin hearts against his skin.

"Younger than you, probably," Harry replied, "but I can't be sure. Stopped counting long ago."

"It's incredible that you remember me at all."

Harry didn't find it strange that the Doctor remembered him. He had scrounged up any and every information on the Time Lords he could find, and thus he had a very good reason to believe that the Time Lords were possessed of eidetic memory, and therefore, he expected, the Doctor would recall every being he had met – especially those with whom he had saved a world – but that was an advantage of being unencumbered with natural limitations and forgetfulness.

Harry had a whole different reason for not forgetting.

"You left a huge impression," Harry said softly, wishing that the embrace would tighten further so that he could feel not only the coarse fabric of the Doctor's jacket against the bare skin of his lower back, "and I used to be embarrassingly impressionable."

The Doctor nodded. "Will you travel with me?"

"Maybe tomorrow," Harry refused. There was so much more he wanted. Becoming yet another companion to the Doctor would have been too disappointing. "Come home with me tonight?"

"On the first date?" the Doctor countered, trying very hard to look scandalised.

Harry didn't point out that the Doctor had essentially asked him to move in – and not for the first time – so in term of human relationships neither of them were in any way reluctant to initiate a more intimate bonding.

Instead, Harry said: "Doctor, we've met before. That we've never actually correlated doesn't seem half as interesting to me as the fact that we obviously will feel very deeply for each other. I've waited for a long time."

Rather than gracefully accept defeat, the Doctor released Harry from the embrace, took a step to the side and offered his hand. "Another dance?"

"Sure," Harry agreed, greedy for more of the body heat.

The Doctor gave Harry a very suspicious look. "You've agreed awfully easily. It's a plot. I know a plot. I recognise it from the smell-" He took an ostentatious sniff of Harry's hair as if he expected it to stink of gunpowder.

"Yes, well," Harry replied, suppressing guffaws, "once upon a time dancing actually was a mating ritual."

"It's difficult to win in a debate with you," the Doctor complained. "You make compelling arguments."

"I don't intend to let you have your way and claim the defeat as a victory," Harry said, enjoying the warmth that enveloped his hand as soon as he had offered it to the Doctor for the taking. "You will come with me, Doctor, share my bed, partake in my body, and on the morrow I will accompany you on your travels. What better way is there to get to know each other than facing danger together? It's worked for us before." There had been that one kiss, an absurdly long time ago, on Earth, and Harry was embarrassed for having clung onto the memory for so long… Or, rather, he would have been embarrassed, were it not for the reality of the Doctor's presence here and now.

"That is your idea of romance, Harry Potter?" The Doctor asked as they kind of sickly swayed to the lack of melody of what passed for music on Car'Antares. "Mortal danger, hordes of angry aliens, brewing wars-"

"Explosive violence," Harry interposed under his breath, "blood, pain, fear, lust-"

The Doctor shut him up with his palm pressed to Harry's mouth.

The gargling and chirping music wasn't conductive to dancing, and even the Doctor wasn't self-assured enough to make a complete fool of himself in the present company, or else he must have been so discomfited by what Harry's presence implied that he was not enjoying himself, therefore the idea of another dance fell through before they even tried.

Harry held the Doctor's wrist and pulled the obstructing hand away.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the salacious Captain from before being abandoned by an Antaresian girl as he ordered yet another highly psychotropic drink.

"I think we're acquainted past this scene," Harry suggested. The Doctor didn't protest, so he ventured further: "I could Apparate us, or we could brave the streets?" He wasn't sure how detailed was the Doctor's knowledge of magic at this point in his timeline, but they were both old enough to warrant another level-up from 'adult' and they could deal with all kinds of insanity. Harry saw no reason whatsoever to feel self-conscious about his ridiculous amount of power in front of his future lover.

"We'll talk later," the Doctor informed Harry, let go of him, and made his way toward the exit.

Harry followed. He had no problem with following when it suited him, and he sure as Hell had no problems with running to keep up.

x

The outside of Tal Pen'ta knew no true darkness.

Inside a private abode, darkness was a choice. Harry had been living here for a few dozen years, but his bedroom roof had remained perpetually unobscured; so long so, that it was probably stuck in that mode.

Starlight and the glow of public lighting filtered through the crystal, deepening the shadows and making the pale colours stand out all the more starkly.

"You should share yourself more often," Harry muttered. His hand absently roamed over the Doctor's shoulder-blades, and left a velvety trace down his spine toward the dip of the small of his back. "It's such a waste to keep yourself from being touched."

The Doctor's arm shot out and wound around Harry's hips, pulling him closer. They shifted a little; Harry ended up on his back, with the Doctor nuzzling the stretchy bit of skin next to his hipbone.

Harry stroked the man's hair.

"Different time, different place," the Doctor mouthed, meaning that of course his values would be different as well, because he was _so_ resistant to all strange ideas.

"Again you hide behind the Time Lord excuse," Harry replied. "You're legendary. People don't expect you to be human-"

"Some do," the Doctor objected. "They're invariably disappointed."

Harry gripped his hair, forgetting how gentle he had wanted to be. It was the Doctor's fault, anyway – no one could remain impassive when wicked fingers explored the inner side of their knee and thigh.

"It's such a faulty definition," Harry lamented, biting onto his lower lip to keep down a whimper. "As if tenacity and insecurity, and compassion, and irrationality were unique to the human race. It's our using a human language, imprinted with human _cockiness_-"

Harry shuddered and sighed at the soft, teasing touch of the Doctor's lips. He was being played, like a cither, by a man who had learned him in the matter of hours. No wonder the Doctor was universally recognised as genius. Harry just had to hope that, in this case, familiarity wouldn't breed contempt.

"There is no word for 'human' in Gallifreyan, High or Low," the Doctor said, so laconically characterising his home culture. He lifted himself on all four.

Harry, admittedly, didn't know much about Gallifreyan culture – only what little remained of its history in the legends. Time Lords had been an arrogant, pretentious, war-oriented race, harsh to the point of amorality by Harry's standards.

He tried to use his leg to capture his lover, force him closer, but they ended up tussling, falling back onto the mattress with Harry being the (very willingly) captured one.

"There are no words for _sek on t hra matin_ in any human language," Harry replied, panting from the struggle.

The Doctor froze and stared down at Harry's face, unnaturally pale under Antaresian nightlight.

Harry found himself looking into the eyes of a man who had lost too much and sworn off responsibility for the rest of his life, but who still tried to save people for no other reason than that he felt he should have been able to.

A spastic surface, and beneath it – the Oncoming Storm.

Harry had not wanted anyone as desperately since… probably ever.

The Doctor, still trying to dissect him with the laser-sharp scrutiny, asked: "Where did you hear that?"

x

_Sek on t hra matin_ could be loosely translated as two pilgrims whose paths kept intersecting, but it was actually a reference to an old legend and a prophecy – the ideal of a Time Lord and a Time Lady who were unaffected by metagravitation but travelled through the causality in a double helix, meeting and parting and meeting and parting until either time or space ran out on them.

Most young Time Lords dreamt of being one of _t hra matin_ – until they looked into the Vortex. That was a sight that discouraged any belief in order or balance or symmetry. As if something like a helix could exist in all that chaotic wibbly-wobbliness! Everyone grew out of the dream; Gallifreyan mentality didn't lend itself to metaphor. The Doctor had spent enough time around humans to understand figures of speech well enough, and he had to wonder if, perhaps, the author of the prophecy had simply had a tad too much _human_ in them.

"There are still bits and pieces of Gallifreyan languages scattered across the universe," Harry told him quietly. "Davros knew some, and by extension so do the Daleks."

There shouldn't have been any Daleks left. Nothing should have remained from the Time War, nothing of Gallifrey, of Time Lords, of Davros, and especially nothing of the Daleks. That Harry even knew Davros' name promised an impending apocalypse. More planets gone. More people lost to someone's violent greed or pride.

Also, there was something mildly unsettling about having this conversation naked, in bed, and about to re-engage his companion in some rather enjoyable life-affirmation.

"He wouldn't have known that phrase," the Doctor told Harry. "That's – poetic. Well, as much as there ever was anything poetic on Gallifrey. Only madmen were poets – or poets all were madmen. It was hard to tell. We had rhythm and rhyme, but not poetry."

Harry raised himself on his elbows, coming a little too close for a proper conversation, but this hadn't been a proper conversation in any of the traditional meanings of the words, and the night also acted like a natural low level perception filter that put things into a skewed, mad, _poetic_ perspective.

"It is a kind of madness, I suppose," Harry mused, tracing irregular patterns on the skin of the Doctor's forearm. "But we're all a little mad. Sanity scares me, some days."

"Where did you hear that, Harry? _Sek on t hra matin_?" the Doctor insisted. He clenched his fists when he heard his own pronunciation – the familiar, long-unused accent. It transformed his voice completely, as if he was singing rather than speaking, hitting the right notes of the wonderfully complex language – a dead language, one that no one understood anymore.

Harry sighed and closed his eyes. "Would you believe me I have dreamt of it?"

"No," the Doctor answered, and then thought it through. Going back to human neurology and considering the theory that dreams were basically sensory experiences fabricated by the cortex as a means of interpreting signals from the bridge, it implied a subliminal perception at some time that was most likely associated in Harry's later life and used as a means of connecting other perceptions in a logical manner.

Harry's disappointed exhale prompted him to say: "Unless it had been planted into your subconscious. You _were_ on Earth in the beginning of the twenty-first century."

"Nineteen eighty to twenty-two eleven or thereabouts," Harry said, green eyes wide again, asking at the same time as Harry tried to figure it out himself. "I used to hop around quite a bit."

That meant that Harry had been there for the Master's destruction of humanity by humanity paradox and the Archangel being used as an amplifier for the Doctor's psychic abilities. Technically none of that should have left any after-effects, but Harry was enough of an oddity that perhaps some memories of the year that never was had remained buried in his subconscious. It was still unlikely, but with a planet-wide telepathic network centered at the Doctor, weird things were practically guaranteed to happen.

The Doctor had thought of the Master then, of how they had been the last two, the last two Time Lords in the universe, the only ones who had survived, meeting and parting and-

"I've actually met you for the first time in nineteen ninety-five. I was thinking of jumping off a church tower," Harry added. There was absolutely no reason for his smile. In fact, the smile was altogether too tender, and in conjunction with the prospect of splattering oneself over a churchyard in the form of a bloody sauce with pieces of gristle and bone rather morbid.

Harry let himself be held tighter, pulled closer, as if some wonderful human instinct was telling him to allow the Doctor to have control for a while, before he adjusted to not only the sudden switch of topic (his brain was used to worse rapid changes of direction) but to the idea that such an inordinately extensive part of the eventual stream had hinged on a child's decision to not suicide.

"At fifteen?" he asked, because that wasn't at all certain with time-travellers.

"My childhood had few bright spots," Harry replied. "You might have been one of the most defining ones, for all of the hour you'd spent."

The Doctor reflected; yesterday had been a very long day for him, but the day before yesterday had been fast and hard and full of running around and saving people who couldn't have saved themselves, and Harry had been there, already giving the Doctor those askance glances that most of his companions eventually would give him, looking like he did now, not a day younger, only much more dressed.

And now Harry was here, not saving anyone, warm, bony, affectionate, with devilish fingers and eyes that were like looking into a mirror for the Doctor. Why were they discussing this again?

"How long have you been waiting?" he asked, because sometimes his curiosity opened his mouth before his brain could keep it closed.

"Very, very, very long," Harry said. Then he shrugged. "But, I'm thinking, it was worth it."

The Doctor had only half-expected Harry to remember him. Half-hoped, too, and that was saying something, because he didn't like hope and hoping. It was necessary, but he viewed it as a bit of a necessary evil, because the grief after a hope was broken was the worst.

After a long meandering and splintering bout of self-reflection, cut short by the presence of warm limbs and a lover with centuries of experience, he couldn't but agree.

Yes. Yes, it _was_ worth the wait.

x

Harry ate another of the _reisha_ – as the fruit was called in basic Antaresian, although Harry liked to think of it as strawberries, discounting the light blue colour – on his plate, and surveyed the Doctor, who looked far less composed than usual in his blue trousers and burgundy shirt, with its two topmost buttons left undone, his hair wet from the traditional water-shower and clinging to his skull.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said after a prolonged while.

Harry glanced up, searching for hints in the Doctor's otherwise expressive face. He could barely recall the other incarnations he had met – he knew now about regeneration and not-quite-death – and he had to keep the memories of them available with the use of a pensieve, but it was enough for him to compare. The Doctor in twenty seventy whom he had encountered at the party on the Skye Island had been a right git, in the way all bitter people were, but the one from nineteen ninety-five had been… Well, he had definitely been older than today's Doctor, and Harry was selfishly looking forward to the regeneration.

He didn't want it to happen anytime soon, because he could sense just how much this Doctor enjoyed life, and Harry would have been loath to see that enjoyment lost.

"What for?" Harry asked, hoping that this wasn't the Doctor's way of announcing his imminent departure from Harry's life.

"For making you wait," the Doctor said. He finished tying his tie and set down at the table, poking at the food Harry had so benevolently prepared for him.

Harry could have laughed with relief. "We could have met at any time, in any place. We have chosen here and now. Neither of us owes the other one an apology for that."

"Car'Antares," the Doctor said, leaning back in his chair until he was staring at the ceiling, although Harry doubted he was seeing it at all. "Day after Kakumei."

"What made you decide to come here?" Harry asked, more to keep the conversation flowing and distract his companion from his musing than out of any particular interest. Of course he _was_ interested – just as much as he would have been interested in any other tidbit of information about the Doctor.

"I promised I would meet you," the Doctor non-answered. He snatched a _reisha_ with his fingers, watching askance if Harry would protest the breach of etiquette, and faux-happily munched on it.

"Now can be whenever for you, Doctor. You could actually be the worst case of avoidance and procrastination there is – who would know?" Harry carded his fingers through his hair in a nervous gesture that was a legacy of his misspent youth, and that still occasionally resurfaced. "Never mind, though. I didn't mean to interrogate you. You don't know me enough yet to confide in me."

The Doctor was apparently canny enough to interpret that plaintive note, because he replied: "I found myself solitary and in the mood for companionship."

Basically, that meant that he had been lonely and remembered that he had a rendezvous with someone who wanted him. That was okay with Harry. Somebody who had lost as much as the Doctor had would be fighting against a romantic attachment tooth and claw.

"So, tell me, Harry," the Doctor said, lifting a piece of fruit to inspect it against the light filtered through the tall, narrow window, "what do you do, apart from time-hopping and arranging dates with elder alien men?"

"I'm kinda chary about the 'elder' thing, to tell you the truth. And I'm just as alien as you are – more so, perhaps," Harry pointed out. They _were_ on Car'Antares, after all. "To answer your non-implied question, I dabble. After some time, you try more or less everything to keep yourself from going off the deep end."

The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. He picked out another _reisha_. It was just as smurf-blue as the ones before. The wonders of mass-production.

"Do you have a job?"

"Suppose," Harry allowed. "Not really a 'job' job, but a reputation that brings clientele that brings money. A vocation, I guess." There was a knowing glint in the Doctor's eyes, and Harry was fairly sure that the Doctor had already known what Harry did before Harry said: "I'm a healer."

"A doctor?" the Doctor asked to confirm.

"Nah." Harry smiled. "I leave _that_ to you."

The Doctor grinned back.

Fortunately, he had simply thought it to be a play on words in English – Harry could use English when speaking to him, which was indescribably freeing and, he felt, part of the reason why the sex had been so good – and that allowed Harry to keep his thoughts private. He didn't have to explain how he had put the Doctor onto a proverbial pedestal in his mind, based on the way the Doctor strove to save the universe, to keep it going, keep it healthy, how he cared for it and held its metaphorical hand through the worst parts.

Harry had liked the Doctor before he had realised the magnitude of who the object of his infatuation was, and after he had awakened to the scope of the truth, his feelings had gained an anchor in unshakable respect.

"You can take a trip then?" the Doctor asked, buttoning his shirt up to his neck and pulling a tie out of his sleeve.

"I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to do it," Harry said. Apparently, the Doctor still didn't know that Harry could Apparate through time. Well, that was one surprise that Harry could keep for a more poignant time.

"And I'll find out how, one of these days," the Doctor promised, stealing another _reisha_ from Harry's plate, as if the ones on his own plate weren't just as good. "Not today, though – or, probably not today. Of course, it depends on your definition of today, because time is a real function at worst and as any artificially settled period 'day' is at best relative and I've got a TARDIS."

He promptly filled his mouth with _sankru_, which was basically bread – insomuch as it was baked from a ground corn-like plant and eggs.

"Is that an invitation?" Harry inquired, pretending to the best of his ability that he wasn't presently sneaking the Doctor two more _reisha_ off of his own plate.

That wasn't a bribe at all.

"Sure," the Doctor agreed easily. "The TARDIS gets cranky when a timeline is ripped and I have memories of you taking advantage of the extent of our acquaintance to which I wasn't privy at that point."

Harry grinned; he could tell that he was probably glowing with glee. "Well… There's still the thing with the monkey that I just need to put my finger on. You can start with the TARDIS. Explanations. Introductions."


End file.
